'All work is autobiographical, so, that’s why I decided to just paint myself, instead of trying to come up with all kinds of wonderful ways to show myself.' Rudolf Stingel

Consistently pushing the boundaries of painting, Rudolf Stingel is one of the most provocative and innovative living artists today. His work seamlessly weaves traditional means of painting with the bravura of Modernism and the critical investigation of artistic production. Examining these art-historical underpinnings, Stingel’s celebrated practice is paradoxically devoid of nostalgia while it oscillates between abstraction and figuration. Recognized for his highly conceptual yet formal-looking monochromatic works, the artist has managed to expand the relationship of painting and architecture, engaging the once mutually exclusive parameters of walls and floors with his carpet pieces, wallpaper paintings and Styrofoam panels penetrated with foot prints. Indeed, Stingel’s work has often meditated on the indexical notion of trace, memory and representational experimentation, exemplified in the present lot, Untitled (Bolego), 2007.

Stemming from his series of photorealist self-portraits, Untitled (Bolego), 2007, is an autobiographical work in so far as it references the self-portrait genre while examining the role of the artist and the romantic notion of aura. In the tradition of masters such as Gerhard Richter and Andy Warhol, Stingel engages in self-portraiture, painting and mechanical reproduction. This intimately scaled work depicts Stingel as a brooding and worldly gentleman, perpetuated by his rugged features, suit and lit cigar, his gaze is fixed on a subject outside of the picture plane, just outside of the viewer’s reach. His emotional presence subtley absorbs the viewer, the pensive and pointed expression on Stingel’s face, evidenced by the crease in his forehead and piercing gaze, belies his worldliness. As with any self-portrait, he, the artist, is the subject of the painting, yet Stingel also makes himself the object of this painting. While Stingel’s attention might be held elsewhere, his physical presence is undeniable, consuming the majority of the picture plane. He is the center of attention, emphasized by the warm glow of candles along the lower right of the canvas, their symbolic presence connoting the celebration of the artist, a milestone, a cause for reflection. The artist is illuminated and enlivened by the candles, the single source of light, each flame reaching upwards in sublime exaltation.

Stingel’s self-portraits are based on photographs taken by Sam Samore, his first series of self-portraits produced in 2005-2006 were attributed to Samore in their titles. As in Untitled (Afer Sam), 2005, Stingel is depicted alone in the composition, clad in the same suit, however, reclined in bed, his glassy eyes fixed towards the heavens, his hair somewhat disheveled. Each work in this series suggests narrative and interior dialogue, the entire structure playing before us like a silent film, flickering in black and white. There are no false pretenses in his large-scale work, in which the artist acknowledges both the photograph upon which these paintings are based and the photographer. Stingel remade the black-and-white projection of the photograph into a mirror-imaged painting swathed in grey scale reminiscent of black and white photography– the vehicle of memory par excellence. Certainly, the careful gesture of each work is not lost on the viewer, in fact, Stingel staged each scene for Samore and then meticulously recreated it on canvas with the help of his assistants, creating a giant grid and painstakingly recreating each fraction of the photographic composition. In doing so, Stingel questions both the authenticity of the painting and his role in creating it. Stingel’s attempt to demystify the art object undermines the romantic trope of the artist and instead draws our attention back to the means of representation.

In this way, Untitled (Bolego), 2007 becomes part of a 'fictional documentary' (to borrow Francesco Bonami’s term), suggesting the inhabiting of space between the real, mundane and self-reflective and the fictional. In the present lot, as in his other self-portraits within this series, 'Stingel has internalized the challenge photography initially proposed to painting when the technology became widely available in the 19th century. This challenge was a strong impetus in the development of the Modernist painting, one that Stingel addresses in much of his work. Stingel moves beyond photography by adding a temporal element. It’s not privileging the historic moment, not dealing with photography in the same way that an artist like Gerhard Richter does. In using a series of photographic moments in a single space, Stingel problematizes the relationship with photography as the viewer starts to connect those images into a single stream.' (G. Carrion- Murayari, 'Untitled,'Rudolf Stingel: At the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, Ostfldern: Hatje Cantz, 2008, p. 112)

Describing Stingel’s 2007 installation at the Whitney and the inclusion of the artist’s photo-realist works, Gary Carrion-Murayari noted that while Stingel’s renowned wallpaper paintings added “to the dramatic impact and dark mood […] they also hover between the expressive and automated tendencies also characteristic of the self portraits Stingel executed in the past two years. Self-representation and emotional expression are some of the most historically familiar goals of painting, a quality that allows viewers to connect artists from Vincent Van Gogh to Albrecht Dürer to Willem de Kooning. The element of painting that Stingel keeps most estranged from the viewer is the presence and the value of the artist as a unique individual. While the silver rooms and the large silver canvases rely upon a mechanized approach to artistic labor, Stingel only allows his own into the work in an indexical manner, first in the footprint paintings and most recently in the series of self-portraits based on photographs of the artist. However, Stingel’s use of photography as the basis for these works removes the possibility of insight into the artist’s psyche. The moody photographs taken by Sam Samore […] all capture the image of Stingel’s body alone. The application of paint onto the canvas is accomplished once again in a depersonalized, inexpressive manner with the artist’s assistants […] transferring each tiny square.” (Ibid., p. 112)

The connection here between expressive and automated gestures certainly qualifies Stingel’s practice of conflating photographic and painterly representation, using mechanical means and photographic language as a reference. This balance between the formal and conceptual is also the hallmark of Gerhard Richter, whose exquisitestill lifes are in fact self-portraits once removed. Richter’s subjects are indexical of the artist’s direct environment and become projections or substitutes for the artist. Richter’s Two Candles, 1982, exemplifies his inherent projection onto the symbolic image. Evoking the tradition of Dutch still life and memento mori, Richter began his candle series after his fiftieth birthday, a milestone for the preeminent artist. Certainly the motif of the burning flame and melting candle carries varying connotations on a central theme, while they certainly have the capacity to evoke celebratory memories, they also evoke the vigil and remembrance, underlining the fleeting and delicate nature of life. As Richter explained: 'I was fascinated by these motifs […] and that [fascination] is also nicely distanced. I felt protected because the motifs are so art-historically charged, and I no longer need to say that I painted them for myself. The motifs were covered by this styled composition, out-of-focus quality, and perfection. So beautifully painted, they take away the fear.' (G. Richter, quoted in D. Elger, Gerhard Richter: A Life in Painting, Chicago, 2009, p. 262).

Like Richter’s Two Candles, 1982, Stingel’s Untitled (Bolego), 2007, presents the viewer with meditative subject matter that delves further into autobiography than any other work by the artist. This rhetoric of warding-off fear or distancing oneself from the subject, particularly when considering the memento mori in the context of photorealism and abstraction, is especially poignant. Roland Barthes theorized that the photographic act could be interpreted as a gesture of embalmment, suspending the subject for eternity. Certainly, within the act of self-portraiture or self-referential painting is the same gesture of embalmment - of halting time. When repetitively turning the camera towards oneself, as Andy Warhol so often did during his career, a series of self-portraits can be interpreted as self-preservation. Here, the subject becomes object much in the same way that Stingel becomes an object and further so in the transference of his objecthood onto the canvas. For Stingel, a true painting is not simply the result of moving a brush over a piece of canvas, however meticulous, but the result of careful observation. Untitled (Bolego) hovers between the real and abstraction, the mundane and the profound, the portrait of a prolific and celebrated contemporary artist basking in the warm glow of his forbearers while ever gazing ahead.