About
I wouldn’t know where to say intervention stops and destruction begins.
—Rudolf Stingel
From his captivatingly realistic oil paintings to his innovative use of Celotex, Styrofoam, carpet, and aluminum, Rudolf Stingel challenges traditional notions of what constitutes a painting. Often dealing with subjects of time, memory, and perception, he embraces industrial materials and ornamental design as vehicles for formal exploration and provoked coincidence, whereby the final state of certain installations is determined by the participation of the viewer.
Born in Merano, Italy, Stingel grew up in the Tyrolean Alps, a mountainous region where Austria, Italy, and Switzerland meet. In 1989, he completed Instructions, a limited-edition manual explaining (in several languages) how to make one of his silver paintings, abstract canvases with undertones of red, yellow, or blue. In his screenprints of these years, Stingel created impressions using folded and creased tulle, then sprayed over the compositions with silver spray paint.
In 1991, Stingel installed a bright orange carpet in Daniel Newberg Gallery, activating the space in an unprecedented way. Confronted with empty white walls, visitors instead could consider the pictorial qualities of the architectural interior. Two years later, at the Biennale di Venezia, Stingel installed a red-orange carpet on the wall, further commenting on the power of display. And in 2004, his site-specific installation Plan B incorporated Stingel’s career-long interest in patterns and repetition, covering the floors of Grand Central Terminal’s Vanderbilt Hall in industrially printed pink and blue floral carpet.
The tensions between wall and floor, tactility and illusion run throughout Stingel’s oeuvre. In 1994, he created a series of monochromatic works cast in polyurethane, rubber compound, aluminum, or bronze. Boldly colored, the works are cast from sections of shag carpets, yet they hang on the wall like minimalist paintings. These were followed by the Styrofoam works of the late nineties and early 2000s. Panels of pink, white, blue, or green Styrofoam (often featuring their industrial logos) become platforms for Stingel’s patterns and gestures: from more mechanical grids of circles and ellipses to meandering lines and footprints.
In 2001, for his solo exhibition at the Museo d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea in Trento, Italy, Stingel lined every available surface of one of the rooms of the museum with metallic Celotex insulation board and visitors drew, wrote, and made imprints on the surface of the reflective silver paneling. Eschewing the preciousness of the artist’s unique mark in favor of the collective gestures of thousands of viewers, Stingel repeated this participatory installation at the 50th Biennale di Venezia (2003); Palazzo Grassi, Venice, (2006); and at his retrospective at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (2007), which traveled to the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, later that year.
Since 2005 Stingel has been painting photorealistic portraits of himself and others, as well as captivating views of mountains and sunsets. His first series of photorealistic self-portraits, Untitled (After Sam) (2005–06), was painted after black-and-white photographs of Stingel taken by American photographer Sam Samore. These were followed by paintings based on photographs of Stingel as a young man, both in black-and-white and in color, each painting capturing details such as the scratches and creases of the original printed photographs. These works enter into dialogue with Stingel’s metallic paintings based on carpet patterns, Damask wallpaper, chain link fences, and more.
Stingel’s site-specific exhibitions have become increasingly immersive, as he transforms galleries and museums into total works of art. His exhibition Live at the Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin (2010) included a wall-to-wall black-and-white carpet printed with an image of an Agra rug, a huge crystal chandelier, and hyperrealistic paintings of the Alps; and at Palazzo Grassi in 2013, he covered the floors and walls with a carpet printed with the pattern of an older Oriental rug, and hung both abstract and photorealistic paintings over it, creating a subdued, all-encompassing environment for his work.
In 2015 Stingel embarked on a series of eight consecutive installations at Gagosian’s Park & 75 gallery in New York, conceived as a single monumental exhibition. In Part I (2015) Stingel presented large oil paintings with multicolored impressions of a Chintamani carpet and a small portrait on paper of a youthful Franz West; Part II (2016) included gold paintings with a chain-link pattern, a small grisaille portrait of Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, and white wall-to-wall carpeting; in Part III (2016) featured large photorealist canvases layered with colorful carpet patterns; Part IV (2016) was a single silver monochrome triptych derived from images of Plan B at Grand Central; Part V (2016) paired a small photorealist portrait with ornate gold paintings; Part VI (2016) consisted of gleaming silver panels cast from sections of inscribed Celotex from previous installations; and both Part VII (2016) and Part VIII (2016–17) presented paintings based on a mural by Ludwig Bemelmans in New York’s Carlyle Hotel.
In 2017, for a private presentation at Casa Malaparte in Capri, Stingel showed multicolored, metallic canvases reminiscent of his early silver paintings—as if the earlier canvases were reflecting some of the spectral color of his more recent sunset works. Stingel’s series continue to build upon and depart from one another, expanding definitions of art and authorship along the way.
Artwork: © Rudolf Stingel
#RudolfStingel
Exhibitions
Visions of the Self: Jenny Saville on Rembrandt
Jenny Saville reveals the process behind her new self-portrait, painted in response to Rembrandt’s masterpiece Self-Portrait with Two Circles.
Rudolf Stingel
In July 2017, a special installation of paintings was shown at Casa Malaparte, Capri, the famous house built by the author, publisher, diplomat, and filmmaker Curzio Malaparte.
Fairs, Events & Announcements
Art Fair
Art Basel Miami Beach 2022
December 1–3, 2022, booth D5
Miami Beach Convention Center
artbasel.com
Gagosian is pleased to present a selection of modern and contemporary works at Art Basel Miami Beach 2022. Returning to Miami for the fair’s twentieth anniversary, the gallery is honored to have participated each year the fair has been held.
Gagosian’s booth at Art Basel Miami Beach 2022. Artwork, left to right: © Gerhard Richter; © Amoako Boafo; © Richard Prince; © 2022 Judd Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; © Richard Diebenkorn Foundation; © The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; © Stanley Whitney. Photo: Sebastiano Pellion di Persano
Art Fair
Art Basel 2022
June 16–19, 2022, hall 2, booth B15
Messe Basel
artbasel.com
Gagosian is pleased to participate in Art Basel 2022 with modern and contemporary works by gallery artists, as well as special entries in the Unlimited section of the fair.
Gagosian’s booth in the main section of the fair represents the full breadth and depth of the gallery’s programming through work by many of its represented artists. On view are new works by Mark Grotjahn, Rudolf Stingel, and Jonas Wood; works by newly represented artists including Ashley Bickerton, Rick Lowe, and Jordan Wolfson; and works by Theaster Gates and Brice Marden, both of whom are also exhibiting at other venues in Basel—Gagosian’s gallery at Rheinsprung 1 and Kunstmuseum Basel, respectively—during the fair.
To receive a pdf with detailed information on the works, please contact the gallery at inquire@gagosian.com. To attend the fair, purchase tickets at artbasel.com.
Gagosian’s booth at Art Basel 2022. Artwork, left to right: © Brice Marden/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; © Succession Picasso 2022; © John Currin; © Jonas Wood; © Mark Tansey; © 2022 Judd Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; © Ellsworth Kelly Foundation. Photo: Sebastiano Pellion di Persano
Art Fair
Art Basel Hong Kong 2022
May 27–29, 2022, booth 1C15
Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre
www.artbasel.com
Gagosian is pleased to participate in Art Basel Hong Kong 2022 with an ensemble of contemporary works by international artists. The gallery’s presentation will feature works by artists including Georg Baselitz, Louise Bonnet, Edmund de Waal, Urs Fischer, Katharina Grosse, Mark Grotjahn, Jennifer Guidi, Simon Hantaï, Hao Liang, Damien Hirst, Thomas Houseago, Tetsuya Ishida, Alex Israel, Ewa Juszkiewicz, Rick Lowe, Takashi Murakami, Albert Oehlen, Nam June Paik, Giuseppe Penone, Rudolf Polanszky, Sterling Ruby, Ed Ruscha, Jenny Saville, Jim Shaw, Rudolf Stingel, Spencer Sweeney, Rachel Whiteread, and Zeng Fanzhi.
Gagosian’s booth at Art Basel Hong Kong 2022. Artwork, left to right: © Georg Baselitz; © Louise Bonnet; © Zeng Fanzhi; © 2019 Takashi Murakami/Kaikai Kiki Co., Ltd. All rights reserved; © Rudolf Stingel. Photo: Martin Wong
Museum Exhibitions
On View
If not now, when?
Collection Max Vorst
Through September 8, 2024
Museum Beelden aan Zee, The Hague, Netherlands
www.beeldenaanzee.nl
If not now, when? features over seventy sculptures and installations in a diverse range of materials from the collection of Max Vorst. The exhibition offers an overview of developments in contemporary sculpture in the twenty-first century. Larger themes such as abstraction and contemporary representations of the human form, among other concepts, are also considered. Work by Theaster Gates, Thomas Houseago, Donald Judd, Adam McEwen, Sterling Ruby, Rudolf Stingel, Jordan Wolfson, and Christopher Wool is included.
Sterling Ruby, Big Yellow Mama, 2013, installation view, Museum Beelden aan Zee, The Hague, Netherlands © Sterling Ruby
Closed
A Dark Hymn
Highlights from the Hill Collection
March 1–April 13, 2024
Hill Art Foundation, New York
hillartfoundation.org
A Dark Hymn celebrates the five-year anniversary of the Hill Art Foundation by examining the collection through the lens of Valentin Bousch’s sixteenth-century stained glass window, The Creation and the Expulsion from Paradise (1533), which is permanently installed in the foundation’s Chelsea building. The exhibition places work from the four major categories of the collection—Renaissance and Baroque bronzes, old master paintings, canvases and sculptures by modern masters, and contemporary art—in dialogue with the window. Work by Willem de Kooning, Mark Grotjahn, Albert Oehlen, Ed Ruscha, Rudolf Stingel, Sarah Sze, and Christopher Wool is included.
Installation view, A Dark Hymn: Highlights from the Hill Collection, Hill Art Foundation, New York, March 1–April 13, 2024. Artwork, left to right: © Ed Ruscha, © Robert Gober, © Caroline Kent, © Sarah Sze. Photo: Matthew Herrmann
Closed
Colección Jumex
Todo Se Vuelve Más Ligero
November 18, 2023–February 11, 2024
Museo Jumex, Mexico City
www.fundacionjumex.org
To celebrate its tenth anniversary, Museo Jumex has invited Lisa Phillips, director of the New Museum, New York, to curate an exhibition drawn entirely from the Jumex collection and occupying the whole building. Featuring work by more than seventy international artists, the exhibition, whose title translates to Everything Gets Lighter, brings together diverse works in a poetic meditation on the meaning of light and manifestations of lightness. Work by Damien Hirst, Steven Parrino, Ed Ruscha, and Rudolf Stingel is included.
Rudolf Stingel, Untitled, 2001–02, Museo Jumex, Mexico City © Rudolf Stingel
Closed
Friends & Lovers
October 6, 2023–January 20, 2024
FLAG Art Foundation, New York
www.flagartfoundation.org
Friends & Lovers is an expansive group exhibition that centers on the relationships between fifty artists and their subjects and explores the infinite ways in which we are influenced by our inner circles. Just as a studio visit opens a window onto an artist’s creative process, whom the artists choose to immortalize through their work—be that a lover, partner, family member, friend, celebrity crush, or a fleeting encounter—provides a similarly fascinating insight into their practice. Work by John Currin, Nan Goldin, Rudolf Stingel, and Anna Weyant is included.
Installation view, Friends & Lovers, FLAG Art Foundation, New York, October 6, 2023–January 20, 2024. Artwork, left to right: © Paul Mpagi Sepuya, © Anna Weyant, © Alessandro Teoldi, © Sung Jik Yang. Photo: Steven Probert