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Christopher Wool

Christopher Wool, Untitled, 1994 Alkyd on aluminum, 52 × 35 inches (132.1 × 88.9 cm)

Christopher Wool, Untitled, 1994

Alkyd on aluminum, 52 × 35 inches (132.1 × 88.9 cm)

Christopher Wool, Untitled, 1990 Enamel paint on aluminum, 108 × 72 inches (274.3 × 182.9 cm)

Christopher Wool, Untitled, 1990

Enamel paint on aluminum, 108 × 72 inches (274.3 × 182.9 cm)

Christopher Wool, Untitled, 1988 Alkyd on paper, 20 × 13 inches (50.8 × 33 cm)

Christopher Wool, Untitled, 1988

Alkyd on paper, 20 × 13 inches (50.8 × 33 cm)

About

Christopher Wool is best known for his paintings of large, black, stenciled letters on white canvases, but he possesses a wide range of styles; using a combined array of painterly techniques, including spray painting, hand painting, and screen-printing, he provides tension between painting and erasing, gesture and removal, depth and flatness. By painting layer upon layer of whites and off-whites over screen-printed elements used in previous works—monochrome forms taken from reproductions, enlargements of details of photographs, screens, and Polaroids of his own paintings—he accretes the surface of his pressurized paintings while apparently voiding their very substance. Only ghosts and impediments to the field of vision remain, each fixed in its individual temporality. Through these various procedures of application and cancellation, Wool obscures the liminal traces of previous elements, putting reproduction and negation to generative use in forming a new chapter in contemporary painting. His paintings can therefore be defined as much by what they are not and what they hold back as what they are.

Wool was born in 1955 in Chicago. He studied at Sarah Lawrence College, Bronxville, New York, and the New York Studio School. Wool’s work has been exhibited extensively around the world in many solo and group exhibitions. Solo shows include the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (1989); Museum Boymans–van Beuningen, Rotterdam, Netherlands (1991, traveled to Kunsthalle Bern, Switzerland; and Kölnischer Kunstverein, Cologne, Germany); Eli Broad Family Foundation, Los Angeles (1992); Ophiuchus Collection, The Hydra Workshop, Greece (1998); Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (1998, traveled to Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; and Kunsthalle Basel); Centre d’Art Contemporain, Geneva (1999); Le Consortium, Dijon, France (2002, traveled to Dundee Contemporary Arts, Scotland, through 2003); Camden Arts Centre, London (2004); Instituto Valenciano de Arte Moderno, Valencia, Spain (2006); ETH (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology), Zurich (2006); Museu de Serralves, Porto, Portugal (2008, traveled to Museum Ludwig, Cologne, Germany); Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris (2012); and Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (2013, traveled to the Art Institute of Chicago).

Wool lives and works in New York.

Mercedes Matter with students at the New York Studio School. Photo: Herbert Matter, courtesy the Department of Special Collections, Stanford University Libraries

Game Changer
Mercedes Matter

Lauren Mahony and Michael Tcheyan pay homage to the founder of the New York Studio School.

A gray and pink painting by Christopher Wool. Abstract.

Christopher Wool: Part Two

Gray turns to pink or his twenty-first century, much of it in Texas. Text by Richard Hell.

A Christopher Wool painting from 1994. White background, with black and pink enamel.

Christopher Wool: Part One

Christopher Wool and his unlikely heroes or conceptual or not? Text by Richard Hell.

Cover of the Winter 2019 Gagosian Quarterly, featuring a selection from a black-and-white Christopher Wool photograph

Now available
Gagosian Quarterly Winter 2019

The Winter 2019 issue of Gagosian Quarterly is now available, featuring a selection from Christopher Wool’s Westtexaspsychosculpture series on its cover.

The cover of the Fall 2019 Gagosian Quarterly magazine. Artwork by Nathaniel Mary Quinn

Now available
Gagosian Quarterly Fall 2019

The Fall 2019 issue of Gagosian Quarterly is now available, featuring a detail from Sinking (2019) by Nathaniel Mary Quinn on its cover.

Still from video Visions of the Self: Jenny Saville on Rembrandt

Visions of the Self: Jenny Saville on Rembrandt

Jenny Saville reveals the process behind her new self-portrait, painted in response to Rembrandt’s masterpiece Self-Portrait with Two Circles.

Free Arts NYC

The Bigger Picture
Free Arts NYC

Meredith Mendelsohn discusses the impact of Free Arts NYC and its mission to foster creativity in children and teens, on the occasion of its twenty-year anniversary.

Black Book

Book Corner
Black Book

Christopher Wool’s Black Book (1989) was selected by Douglas Flamm, a rare-book specialist at Gagosian, for a special focus. Text by Anna Heyward.

Painting Paintings (David Reed) 1975

Painting Paintings (David Reed) 1975

In this video, Christopher Wool, Katy Siegel, and David Reed discuss Reed’s paintings and memories of the New York arts scene in 1975.

New York, 1975

New York, 1975

Katy Siegel and Christopher Wool discuss David Reed’s paintings and the New York art scene in 1975.

Fairs, Events & Announcements

Gagosian’s booth at Art Basel Miami Beach 2021. Artwork, left to right: © Albert Oehlen; © Judd Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; © Mary Weatherford. Photo: Sebastiano Pellion di Persano

Art Fair

Art Basel Miami Beach 2021

December 2–4, 2021, booth D5
Miami Beach Convention Center
artbasel.com

Gagosian is pleased to announce its participation in Art Basel Miami Beach 2021 with a presentation of modern and contemporary works. A selection of these works will also appear on gagosian.com and on Art Basel’s Online Viewing Room.

To receive a pdf with detailed information on the works, please contact the gallery at inquire@gagosian.com. To attend the fair, purchase tickets at artbasel.com.

Gagosian’s booth at Art Basel Miami Beach 2021. Artwork, left to right: © Albert Oehlen; © Judd Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; © Mary Weatherford. Photo: Sebastiano Pellion di Persano

Jonas Wood, Clipping Plate, 2021 © Jonas Wood

Fundraiser

Artist Plate Project 2021
Coalition for the Homeless

Launching November 16, 2021, 10am est

Limited-edition bone china plates produced by Prospect and featuring artwork by more than forty artists—including Virgil Abloh, Urs Fischer, Helen Frankenthaler, Alex Israel, Ewa Juszkiewicz, Ed Ruscha, Sarah Sze, Tom Wesselmann, Jonas Wood, and Christopher Wool—will be sold through Artware Editions to raise funds for the Coalition’s lifesaving programs. The funds raised by the sale of the plates will provide food, crisis services, housing, and other critical aid to thousands of people experiencing homelessness and instability. The purchase of one plate can feed one hundred homeless and hungry New Yorkers.

Jonas Wood, Clipping Plate, 2021 © Jonas Wood

Mark Grotjahn, Untitled (Capri 53.57), 2020 © Mark Grotjahn

Support

The Kitchen
Ice and Fire: A Benefit Exhibition in Three Parts

October 15, 2020–March 23, 2021

The benefit exhibition Ice and Fire features works by more than forty artists who have enduring relationships with the Kitchen in New York. Installed within the organization’s three-story space in Chelsea, which is currently closed due to the global pandemic, the three-part exhibition is viewable online. Proceeds from sales will go toward a planned renovation on the occasion of the Kitchen’s fiftieth anniversary, ensuring that the nonprofit space will remain a platform for artistic experimentation in its historic and beloved building. Work by Cecily Brown, Roe Ethridge, Mark Grotjahn, Alex Israel, Ed Ruscha, Taryn Simon, Mary Weatherford, and Christopher Wool is included.

Mark Grotjahn, Untitled (Capri 53.57), 2020 © Mark Grotjahn

See all News for Christopher Wool

Museum Exhibitions

Ed Ruscha, Victory, 1987, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh © Ed Ruscha

Closed

The Milton and Sheila Fine Collection

November 18, 2023–March 17, 2024
Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh
carnegieart.org

Milton and Sheila Fine have been longtime advocates and supporters of the arts in their philanthropy throughout the Pittsburgh region. Promised to Carnegie Museum of Art in 2015, their collection of contemporary painting, sculpture, photography, and drawing reflects their interest in American and German art from the 1980s to the 2000s. This exhibition, which is presented as a celebration and remembrance of Milton Fine, who passed away in 2019, foregrounds the importance and impact of the gift. Work by Richard Artschwager, Georg Baselitz, Mark Grotjahn, Donald Judd, Brice Marden, David ReedEd Ruscha, Richard SerraJeff Wall, and Christopher Wool is included.

Ed Ruscha, Victory, 1987, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh © Ed Ruscha

Helen Frankenthaler, Overture, 1992 © 2023 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Closed

The Inner Island

April 28–November 4, 2023
Fondation Carmignac, Porquerolles, France
www.fondationcarmignac.com

This exhibition, which features more than eighty works by fifty artists, presents visitors with new, unknown worlds floating outside familiar geographies and temporalities. The artists included break away from reality, bringing to life fictional, mental, and abstract islands. Work by Harold Ancart, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Alexander Calder, Helen Frankenthaler, Simon Hantaï, Roy Lichtenstein, Albert Oehlen, and Christopher Wool is included.

Helen Frankenthaler, Overture, 1992 © 2023 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Albert Oehlen, Untitled, 1990 © Albert Oehlen

Closed

Beautiful, Vivid, Self-contained

April 21–July 21, 2023
Hill Art Foundation, New York
hillartfoundation.org

Beautiful, Vivid, Self-contained is an exhibition curated by David Salle that brings together paintings and sculptures by artists working across different eras, mediums, and geographies to explore the notion of affinity between works of art. Alongside a painting by Salle from 1988, work by Francis Bacon, Willem de Kooning, Mark Grotjahn, Brice Marden, Albert Oehlen, Pablo Picasso, Cy Twombly, and Christopher Wool is included.

Albert Oehlen, Untitled, 1990 © Albert Oehlen

Ashley Bickerton, Ocean Chunk: Indian Ocean/Aegean Sea, 2021, installation view, DESTE Foundation Project Space, Slaughterhouse, Hydra, Greece © Ashley Bickerton. Photo: Paris Tavitian

Closed

The Greek Gift

June 22–October 31, 2021
DESTE Foundation Project Space, Slaughterhouse, Hydra, Greece
deste.gr

Coordinated by Massimiliano Gioni, this exhibition brings together a series of new and existing works alongside found objects and impromptu responses from a variety of artists who have maintained decades-long relationships with Dakis Joannou and the DESTE Foundation. Part divertissement and part collaborative project, the exhibition borrows its title from a chess tactic—the “Greek gift sacrifice.” Installed in the small, cavernous spaces of the Slaughterhouse, the works sit side by side like toys in a dollhouse. Work by Ashley Bickerton, Urs Fischer, and Christopher Wool is included.

Ashley Bickerton, Ocean Chunk: Indian Ocean/Aegean Sea, 2021, installation view, DESTE Foundation Project Space, Slaughterhouse, Hydra, Greece © Ashley Bickerton. Photo: Paris Tavitian

See all Museum Exhibitions for Christopher Wool