This article is part of a special section at the museum about how institutions are working to give visitors more to see, do and feel.
Artist Christopher Wool wore a black button-down shirt with pants and white sneakers. Her long, stiff white hair pulled back into a ponytail contrasted well with the black frames of her glasses.
He looked like he could easily disappear into one of his signature black brushstroke paintings, hanging in an 18,000-square-foot unfinished industrial space on the 19th floor of an unmanned office in Manhattan's financial district. He rented this space last year to prepare for his largest exhibition since the Guggenheim retrospective in 2013.
““See Stop Run,” a survey of Wool’s work produced primarily over the past decade, opens at 101 Greenwich Street on March 14 and runs until July 31. 74 works are on display.
The unrefined, somewhat broken and exposed interior is a deliberately non-traditional environment chosen for an equally non-traditional show.
“Galleries can be limited. Primitive space is not like that,” Wool, 68, said, standing amid the quiet chaos of her work. “The dilemma of the white cube gallery room is that it is neutral. It gives you nothing. The nature of this space gives something back.
“The wire sculpture hanging in the space where other industrial items are hung is interesting. “You can’t get that in a gallery,” he said.
Here, he says, “there are endless architectural elements that can be exploited, including endless windows and natural light. It’s visually interesting to me and creates a certain mood for the painting.”
Traveling through space with Wool is a thoughtful experience. He is a deliberate, shy and somewhat introverted speaker. He prefers his art to speak for him rather than his own voice. And his work speaks volumes in this almost abandoned space.
Of the 74 works on display, nine of the 11 paintings are recent silk screens of black, Rorschach-like brushstrokes on linen. The more than 30 works are multi-layered oil and inkjet works on paper featuring swirling clouds. Four are photo series, one of which documents the fire of the Manhattan building where he worked in 1996. Twenty-five of them are sculptures that appear to have been graffitied with copper plating or barbed wire. And one is a massive mosaic (11 x 16½ feet) that is being shown to the public for the first time and is only the second mosaic he has created.
The large U-shaped space naturally creates a variety of environments, each of which Wool uses to showcase inspiration and repetition in her work.
“Despite the fact that I work in several mediums, they are all tied to the core. There are compositions, drawings, images, the way multiple images make a statement, how a photo book can be compared to a sculpture, how a sculpture can be compared, and so on. “I draw a picture,” he explained. Other than adding overhead lights and sprinklers, the space was left untouched and unimproved.
“Imperfection is the goal. “There is a tension in this work with imperfection and a bit of chaos, which is further enhanced by how unfinished and raw the space is.” He spoke as he stood in front of a painting intentionally placed on a wall that shared many of the same colors and properties. Black, grey, white and pale salmon tones are used in Wool's art. “There is also a lot of white paint running on the walls and chunks of white plaster, which enhances the painting and artistry. This story is about the relationship between the different elements of the work and the building itself.”
In 1972, at the age of 17, Wool, whose mother was a psychiatrist and father a molecular biologist, moved from Chicago to New York. After receiving only two years of art training – one year at Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville and one year at the New York Studio School in Manhattan – he decided to pursue art education on his own. In 1976, at the age of 20, he rented his first studio in Chinatown, where he spent the next 25 years creating art and immersing himself in the lifestyle of a struggling artist.
“I started young, lacking skills and experience. It took me longer than most people to find myself. “I didn’t have any natural talent,” he said.
While experimenting with text painting and silk screening, his talent began to blossom.
From the 1980s to the late 1990s, Wool was heavily associated with the postmodernist Neo-Expressionist leanings, thanks to its large black stenciled letters of movie quotes and punk-like graffiti spray-painted on canvas. He then experimented with layering of paint, often using or recycling his previous works to create new pieces. Reproductions or other repetitions of specific works followed, as did stencil work and large, gestural, smudged paintings.
In 2007, Uhl and his wife, Charline von Heyl, a German painter, purchased a home in Marfa, Texas. He said immersing her body in the sweeping vista “immediately made me think about sculpture,” and she spoke of the winding, tangled barbed wire that inspired the sculptures hanging from the space’s ceiling. He joined the board of the Chinati Foundation and continued to create photographs, prints, books (five volumes) and sculptures. This became the big center and focus.
A 2013 Guggenheim retrospective highlighted his first sculptures. The show, which ran from October 25, 2013, to January 22, 2014, was a huge success, but he said that after five years he was exhausted and unable to find inspiration and creativity. “It wasn’t just fatigue,” he explains, walking towards a wall of windows that let in natural light, adding to the feeling of floating in space. “I worked slowly and without energy.”
During his preparations for the Guggenheim Museum and the following two years, his work received great attention. The work, a 1988 typography mashup titled “Apocalypse Now” and displaying the phrase “Sell the house, sell the car, sell the kids,” sold for more than $26 million at Christie's in 2013. Two years later, a 1990 enamel on aluminum print with the word “Riot” engraved on two different lines sold for nearly $30 million at Sotheby's.
Anyone who wants to purchase Wool’s work at See Stop Run” You will be disappointed. None of the works are for sale. Despite its large operation, building restrictions and zoning policies prohibit Wool from charging admission to conduct business or even sell drinks.
Despite the enormous amount of work, Wool “enjoyed this very creative process. “It feels like creating a work of art.”
And it had another unexpected effect.
“Working in this building reawakened my love of New York that I had lost,” Wool said. He added, “I OD’d in this city, and it can wear you down.” But I fell in love with this 120-year-old building.”