Provenance
Paula Cooper Gallery, New York
Exhibited
New York, Paula Cooper Gallery, Rudolf Stingel, April - June 2000
Literature
Exh. Cat., Chicago, Museum of Contemporary Art, Rudolf Stingel, 2007, pp. 142-143 (illustrated)
Catalogue Essay

Through his instructional photographs, sculptural installations and industrially produced paintings, Stingel’s work explores the essence of making, gesture, and expression, questioning authenticity and authorship. Often inviting the audience to interact with his work, Stingel promulgates the artistic process, allowing his artworks to develop as public ‘collaborations’. Through reconsidering the appreciation of aesthetics as a relational experience, Stingel challenges ideas of cultural hierarchy, modes of production, and the mythology of the artist.

The present lot, a large scale four panel white Styrofoam footprint painting from 2000, is undeniably reminiscent of and influenced by the oeuvre of the great European monochromists like Yves Klein and Piero Manzoni and of gestural painters like Albert Oehlen and Christopher Wool. But at the same time it can be understood as an Americanized, Warholian version of Arte Povera. Like his Italian predecessors Stingel often favors cheap materials, but instead of being distressed they are always brand new, industrial and somehow implicitly American. The present lot was created through a performative process in which Stingel covered the entire floor of his studio with Styrofoam and then walked across the thick surface in boots dipped in lacquer thinner. Like walking across fresh, virginal snow, the Styrofoam melted with each of Stingel’s steps leaving behind only the markings of a footprint. The final work is then arranged in single, double or as in this case a monumentous four panels taken from the much larger field of panels that covered the entire studio floor.

The resulting conjunction of abstraction and figuration, although created using banal industrial materials, nevertheless remains extremely elegant and poetic. Romantic associations are abound with the pure, white, virginal surface sullied by Stingel’s gestures, a process and intent reminiscent of the American conceptual painter Robert Ryman. Like Ryman, Stingel presents the materials of his art at face value and conceptually explores the act of painting as a self-reflective metaphor for perception and memory. As repositories of chance marks and gestures, Stingel’s ' canvas’- the white styrofoam panels- draw attention to their own materiality. Yet they also possess an abstract iridescence and disarming ethereality reminiscent of the work of the greatest of all Italian post-war painters Lucio Fontana.
Artist Biography
Rudolf Stingel
Italian • 1956
Rudolf Stingel came to prominence in the late 1980s for his insistence on the conceptual act of painting in a context in which it had been famously declared dead. Despite the prevailing minimalist and conceptual narrative of the time, the Italian-born artist sought to confront the fundamental aspirations and failures of Modernist painting through the very medium of painting itself. While his works do not always conform to the traditional definitions of painting, their attention to surface, space, color and image provide new and expanded ways of thinking about the process and "idea" of painting. Central to his multifarious and prolific oeuvre is an examination of the passage of time and the probing of the fundamental questions of authenticity, meaning, hierarchy, authorship and context by dislocating painting both internally and in time and space. Stingel is best known for his wall-to-wall installations, constructed of fabric or malleable Celotex sheets, as well as his seemingly more traditional oil-on-canvas paintings.
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10

Rudolf Stingel

Untitled

2000
Styrofoam in four parts.
121.9 x 244.1 x 9.9 cm (48 x 96.1 x 3.9 in).

Estimate
£350,000 - 550,000 ‡♠

Sold for £337,250

Contemporary Art Evening Sale

17 Feb 2011
London

1
Wade Guyton
Untitled
Estimate £50,000 - 70,000
Sold for £213,650
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2
Mary Heilmann
Rude Boy
Estimate £70,000 - 90,000 ‡
Sold for £103,250
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3
Jim Lambie
Night Divides the Day
Estimate £40,000 - 60,000 ♠
Sold for £91,250
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4
Lucio Fontana
Concetto spaziale, Attesa
Estimate £400,000 - 600,000
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5
Günther Uecker
Mutation
Estimate £150,000 - 200,000 ♠
Sold for £223,250
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6
Robert Morris
Felt
Estimate £200,000 - 300,000
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7
Georg Herold
Untitled
Estimate £40,000 - 60,000 ♠
Sold for £121,250
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8
Rudolf Stingel
Untitled
Estimate £300,000 - 500,000 ♠
Sold for £361,250
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9
Peter Fischli and David Weiss
4 Hostessen (4 Stewardesses)
Estimate £250,000 - 350,000 ♠
Sold for £277,250
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10
Rudolf Stingel
Untitled
Estimate £350,000 - 550,000 ‡♠
Sold for £337,250
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11
Jean-Michel Basquiat
Overrun
Estimate £1,000,000 - 1,500,000 ‡
Sold for £1,127,650
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12
Raqib Shaw
Absence of God III... And His Tears of Blood Will Drown the Cities of Men II
Estimate £600,000 - 800,000 ‡
Sold for £553,250
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13
Anselm Reyle
Harmony
Estimate £120,000 - 180,000 ♠
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14
Anselm Reyle
Untitled
Estimate £70,000 - 100,000 ♠
Sold for £79,250
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15
Subodh Gupta
No. 1
Estimate £150,000 - 200,000 ‡
Sold for £121,250
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16
Donald Judd
Untitled (89-30)
Estimate £120,000 - 180,000 ‡
Sold for £169,250
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17
Ilya Kabakov and Emilia Kabakov
The Painting on an Easel
Estimate £400,000 - 600,000 ♠
Sold for £361,250
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18
Michelangelo Pistoletto
Ritratto sigg. Lerre (Portrait of Mr. Lerre)
Estimate £70,000 - 90,000 ♠
Sold for £67,250
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19
Martin Kippenberger
Mirror for Hang-Over Bud
Estimate £150,000 - 200,000
Sold for £145,250
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20
Robert Rauschenberg
Address Unknown
Estimate £250,000 - 350,000 ‡
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21
Martin Kippenberger
Untitled
Estimate £200,000 - 300,000 ‡
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22
Albert Oehlen
Untitled
Estimate £100,000 - 150,000 ♠
Sold for £193,250
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23
Karel Appel
Birds Over the Red Sea
Estimate £200,000 - 300,000 ‡
Sold for £205,250
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24
Victor Vasarely
Cassiopée II NB
Estimate £100,000 - 150,000 ‡
Sold for £157,250
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25
Arnaldo Pomodoro
Disco con Sfera
Estimate £60,000 - 80,000 ♠
Sold for £61,250
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26
Bill Viola
Basin of Tears
Estimate £150,000 - 250,000 Ω
Sold for £181,250
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27
Marlene Dumas
Equality
Estimate £80,000 - 120,000 ♠
Sold for £121,250
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28
Dan Colen
Wouldn't it be Nice
Estimate £20,000 - 30,000 †
Sold for £85,250
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29
Martin Creed
Work no. 230 (Don’t Worry)
Estimate £30,000 - 40,000 ♠
Sold for £51,650
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Contemporary Art Evening Sale

17 Feb 2011 London

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Provenance

Exhibited

Literature

Catalogue Essay

Artist Biography

Rudolf Stingel

10

Rudolf Stingel

Untitled

Contemporary Art Evening Sale

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17 Feb 2011
London