Following his characteristic word pictures of the 1980s and 90s, in the 2000s the renowned artist Christopher Wool returned to his earlier preoccupation, namely, developing a distinct approach to painting. Marked by a unique blend of gestural draughtsmanship and a captivating exploration of abstraction, Wool’s work explores reduced pictorial forms in an all-over style that often reflects a dynamic interplay between chaos and control. He employs layers of bold brushstrokes and expressive gestures to create intricate compositions, often erasing then re-working parts, intertwining graffiti-like marks with painterly gestures. Silkscreen becomes an integral part of this process, serving as a way to reproduce paintings and then continue re-working the surfaces (what Wool refers to as “painted silkscreens”). Deeply inspired by Willem de Kooning’s 1964-66 Women series, in Three Women (Dark I), Wool’s skilful manipulation of form and colour subtly evoke a sense of femininity without overtly representational elements.

Also inspired by de Kooning, the publisher Jörg Schellmann decided to commission Door Cycle after he saw the  artist's project of the same name exhibited at the Whiteney Museum of American Art in 1996. Schellmann considered the formal and poetic qualities of the door, such as its metaphoric values, its measurements corresponding to a human's general size, and its appearance and dimensions representing a canvas. He concluded that the door would be a fitting starting point for artists to make editioned works with and so he invited a range of artists, including Olafur Eliasson, Sarah Morris and Anish Kapoor, to create works on prefabricated hollow-core doors, resulting in the Door Cycle, 2006. 

“With its flat, empty surface, light weight and painting-size, the mass-produced door panel seemed to be an appropriate contemporary product to make work in editions with. After two years of consideration, Edition Schellmann invited a group of artists to create works of art on prefabricated hollow-core doors. The 16 works that resulted – painting, object, silkscreen, sculpture, relief, and other techniques, on wood, glass, steel and even paper – were produced in editions of 15.”

—Jörg Schellmann