Christopher Wool
03 Nov - 31 Dec 2011
CHRISTOPHER WOOL
3 November - 31 December, 2011
We are pleased to announce Christopher Wool's fifth solo exhibition with Galerie Capitain, consisting of four large paintings and three drawings.
What at first appears as a bold and painterly gesture is in fact the result of a screen-printing process where individual elements are used repeatedly throughout the works. The new pictures bring to mind oversized Rorschach-Tests - large, loose forms whose contours remain unclear and act like blown-up inkblots.
The screen-printed elements are based on photographs of earlier small-format drawings that are first computer-manipulated, then printed out massively enlarged, so that the pixels are visible in a range of sizes. These enlarged pictures are then digitally reworked and combined with other motifs. Every colour is filtered out individually and reduced to a grayscale. Single screen-printed elements are combined and printed over each other, resulting in the offsetting and shift of indentical elements within the image. Areas with pixels of different sizes interfere with each other and colour is at times reintroduced - the progression of individual steps cannot be understood from the final result.
For the drawings the same motifs were used, but in contrast to the paintings worked upon in several layers by hand. Paint is poured onto the printed motif, a further colour may be introduced as a monoprint. But even here no clear contours are revealed, as the individual areas of the image blur and interfere with one another. The layers of paint are thick and reflective - in places one sees that the paint has contracted while drying and so introduced a further texture to the surface.
The new works by Christopher Wool are abstract paintings in which, with the help of various digital technologies, the individual gesture is eliminated only for the subjective to be finally reintroduced through the analogue, hands-on process of screen-printing and its inherent imperfections.
3 November - 31 December, 2011
We are pleased to announce Christopher Wool's fifth solo exhibition with Galerie Capitain, consisting of four large paintings and three drawings.
What at first appears as a bold and painterly gesture is in fact the result of a screen-printing process where individual elements are used repeatedly throughout the works. The new pictures bring to mind oversized Rorschach-Tests - large, loose forms whose contours remain unclear and act like blown-up inkblots.
The screen-printed elements are based on photographs of earlier small-format drawings that are first computer-manipulated, then printed out massively enlarged, so that the pixels are visible in a range of sizes. These enlarged pictures are then digitally reworked and combined with other motifs. Every colour is filtered out individually and reduced to a grayscale. Single screen-printed elements are combined and printed over each other, resulting in the offsetting and shift of indentical elements within the image. Areas with pixels of different sizes interfere with each other and colour is at times reintroduced - the progression of individual steps cannot be understood from the final result.
For the drawings the same motifs were used, but in contrast to the paintings worked upon in several layers by hand. Paint is poured onto the printed motif, a further colour may be introduced as a monoprint. But even here no clear contours are revealed, as the individual areas of the image blur and interfere with one another. The layers of paint are thick and reflective - in places one sees that the paint has contracted while drying and so introduced a further texture to the surface.
The new works by Christopher Wool are abstract paintings in which, with the help of various digital technologies, the individual gesture is eliminated only for the subjective to be finally reintroduced through the analogue, hands-on process of screen-printing and its inherent imperfections.