Wool in same year also began making his frst digital paintings, this process also parallels the editing techniques used in digital media. As Eric Hall has commented, “it’s as if he’s leeched the life out of his vibrant loops, captured them on flm, then searched for a way to bring them back to life” (Eric Hall, in Hans Werner Holzwarth, ed., Christopher Wool, Cologne, 2008, p. 371).
Albert Oehlen, Woods Near Oele, 1999. Private Collection, Artwork © Albert Oehlen
the composition hold just as much importance. Each mark, whether additive or subtractive, contributes to the success of the compositional whole. As such, this series directly engages with the legacy of Abstract Expressionism, not only within the art historical canon but as a loaded specter within the canon of American painting at large. As Katherine Brinson describes, “excruciatingly aware of the taboo status of gestural mark-making as an index of self-expression, Wool was nonetheless compelled to explore whatever space was lef within abstraction for a critical practice” (Katherine Brinson, “Trouble is My Business”, Christopher Wool, exh. cat., Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 2013, p. 37). A crucial innovation in his practice, it is in this series that Wool fully embraces the creative potential of “un-making”. With an irreverent nod to Robert Rauschenberg’s Erased de Kooning Drawing, 1953, Wool embraces erasing and smudging of the preceding vision. The viewer is lef to consider what was once there, whilst simultaneously being drawn into the new gestural tides brought about in the wake of this destruction. Considering how
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By overlaying motifs and gestures over one another, sometimes efacing and sometimes adding to those marks which proceeded them, Wool creates a time-stamped surface that collapses and condenses duration as the moment of creation is suspended and overwritten interminably. In so doing, the resulting composition is at once fnal and also a physical manifestation of the process of its making. Across a slick surface that is expressive without calling for an antiquated valorization of the artist’s hand, Wool explores and makes manifest the inherent contradictions of painting, instigating a new conceptual appreciation of the medium where his works “are defned by what they’re not—and what they hold back” (Ann Goldstein, Christopher Wool, exh. cat., The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, 1998, p. 263)
Gerhard Richter, Tisch, 1962. Private Collection, Artwork © Gerhard Richter 2018 (0230)
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