Rudolf Stingel Untitled

cm 60 x 50

Rudolf Stingel uses a great variety of expressive media ranging from silver monochrome paintings to oils that reproduce decorative patterns, large installations in Cellotex, works in polystyrene, and carpets that cover the entire exhibition space. Performance and participation are crucial to his work: in fact the public is invited to interact with the works and to modify them with their intervention. Already in 1989, at the beginning of his career, he was reflecting on the artist’s role by publishing instructions, a lively manual accompanied by photographs in which he explains, in different languages, how to make his Silver paintings, the famous silver abstract paintings, made by applying to the canvas a thick layer of paint covered with a veil of tulle on which the silver spray vaporizes. Postulating the complete reproducibility of his work, he ironizes and demystifies the concept of authenticity and perception and transforms art into mere decoration. This perspective also belongs to the painting Untitled in which appears, on the left, a damask ornamental motif that evokes the baroque and rococo tapestry of 18th century mansions. In this case too, the work is made in a mechanical way: he uses as a template a preprinted pattern that appears in many other contemporary paintings and installations.

No

G. Belli, G. Nicoletti (eds.), Rudolf Stingel, exhibition catalogue (Rovereto, MART-Museo d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Trento e Rovereto), Milan 2001. F. Bonami (ed.), Rudolf Stingel, exhibition catalogue (Chicago, Museum of Contemporary Art), Chicago 2007. Rudolf Stingel, exhibition catalogue (Venice, Punta della Dogana, François Pinault Foundation, Palazzo Grassi), Milan 2013.

Foto Roberto Galasso

Donation by Claudia Gian Ferrari

Painting