\t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\tChristopher Wool’s exhibition “See, Stop, Run” at the 101 Greenwich Street office building in New York in 2024. <\/span><\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tPhotograph by Christopher Wool<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n \n \tOnly in the post-pandemic era, when demand for office leasing was suppressed, did Wohl have the opportunity to rent the property. The artist is not a typical tenant, and he still spent a lot of money to rent the space and bring it into compliance with regulations; he even had to set up a company so that he could “lend” his work to the exhibition. Historically, emerging artists and emerging institutions have taken advantage of economic downturns to exhibit work in unconventional locations. But for Wohl, financial concerns are not a motivation. He is an artist with considerable financial resources and privilege, and dealers may compete to show (and sell) his work. His goal, according to an accompanying essay by curator Anne Pont\u00e9gnie, is to “escape the neutrality of contemporary art spaces.”<\/p>\n \n \tIf this strategy weren\u2019t so consistent with his process, it might seem contrived\u2014an artist using the aesthetics of ruins to reinforce a sense of resilience in his own work. Wool has long sought to challenge the integrity of his work, whether by degrading the quality of reproductions or by continually reworking it. By exhibiting his paintings, sculptures, and photographs in environments that deny clarity and order, he once again tests the resilience and adaptability of his art.<\/p>\n \n \tSince the late 1990s, Wool has used erasure, blurring, altering scale, distortion and collage to generate new images from pre-existing works, swirling around while tumbling forward. This is not apparent in the exhibition, where related works are not always hung together, though certain forms and motifs do run throughout. Many of the paintings derive from a pair of folded \u201cRorschach\u201d inkblots that Wool made in enamel in 1986 (not on display). Between 2020-23, Wool painted on digital inkjet prints of these contoured spots. A group of ten paintings hangs in a grid on the few walls the artist has added, but one gets the sense that he has produced endless variations from these accident-based images. In turn, an early painting in the series, Untitled<\/em> (2020), became the basis for a pair of large-scale screen prints, both Untitled<\/em> (2023). These nearly identical, oversized objects greet viewers as they exit the elevator, immediately establishing Wool\u2019s talent for creating difference through repetition.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\tChristopher Wool’s exhibition “See, Stop, Run” at the 101 Greenwich Street office building in New York in 2024. <\/span><\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tPhotograph by Christopher Wool<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n \n \tA highlight of the exhibition is a series of intricate sculptures that Wool has made over the past decade from recycled rancher wire and fencing from around his home in Marfa, Texas\u2014though they often disappear into the clutter of the background. The jumble of scrap metal recalls tumbleweeds, but Wool achieves an impressive variety of forms. His earliest works were Untitled<\/em> (2013), is a surprisingly elegant mass of rusted barbed wire, suspended at eye level like a low-hanging chandelier. Untitled<\/em> (2019) is a tangled mass of twisted wire, mesh, and metal slats. Others are more compact, like densely woven bird\u2019s nests. It is one of several works that Wool has enlarged and cast in rose-tinted bronze. Untitled<\/em> (2021) Perched precariously on a pedestal \u2013 a dancer twirls. Bad Bunny<\/em> (2022), Wool photocopied images of his wire structures to enhance contrast and flatten the sculptures, thus heightening their relationship to the lines he had drawn.<\/p>\n \n \tWall’s painted and carved lines converge into a new mosaic, Untitled<\/em> (2023). Adapted from a 2021 oil on paper, it itself is a reworking of an earlier silkscreen, with squares of stone and glass mimicking the pixelated distortion of a digitized source. Standing 11 feet tall and stretching from floor to ceiling, the painting looks like it was custom-made for the site (but it isn\u2019t). Farther uptown, another office building\u2014Two Manhattan West\u2014is home to Wool\u2019s first mosaic. This similar but much larger mosaic Intercity Transportation<\/em> (2023) towers over visitors to the spacious lobby of this gleaming new development, suggesting that the artist could also get along with the moneyed elite. The version on display in this exhibition is far more modest: a cloud of swirling black, white, and dirty pink that fits better with the bustle of this transitional space. The mosaic matches the hue of the site\u2019s exposed tiles, which look as if they were excavated during construction.<\/p>\n \n \tWool could have easily mounted this exhibition at one of New York\u2019s ever-expanding blue-chip galleries (he showed many of these works at Xavier Hufken\u2019s brand-new gallery in Brussels two years ago). But the ready-made rawness of the venue complements the willfully raw energy of his work. Ultimately, the building\u2019s exposed interior draws our attention to the multiple layers of Wool\u2019s recursive process, the deteriorated images buried under layers of scribbled paint and digital manipulation\u2014the cumulative history of images.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n![\"One](\"https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/101-INSTALL-6.jpg?w=400\")
<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/101-INSTALL-9.jpg?w=400\")
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