Rudolf Stingel - Contemporary Art Evening Sale London Friday, October 12, 2007 | Phillips

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  • Provenance

    Tanja Grunert, Cologne

  • Catalogue Essay

    “To paint is to act. Yet this action does nopt necessarily produce a painting. Most of the time, the Result is an approximation of an ideal painting that exists in the mind of the painter..Although..painting can be an action, it must also be an observation. The mere act of painting does not create a Painting but simply some painting. But if the action of painting is used as a lens to observe reality to create another reality, then we have a Painting. ..Stingel creates a transitive way to recede from abstraction into the subject and to push the subject into a different kind of time.” (Francesco Bonami, ed., 'Paintings of Paintings for Paintings – The Kairology and Kronology of Rudolf Stingel' in Rudolf Stingel, London, 2007, pp. 13-14)

    First recognized in the late 1980s for his monochromatic works, Rudolf Stingel has developed a singular approach to painting aiming to undermine the very essence of creative act. Characterized by simultaneous attention to surface, image, color and space he creates new paradigms for the meaning of painting: Reflecting upon the fundamental questions concerning painting today – authenticity, meaning, hierarchy and context, his abstract works stand in close tradition to Gerhard Richter. Yet unlike Richter, Stingel’s works form a new approach, trying to overcome the gap between figuration and abstraction, constantly negotiating a balance between kairos and kronos. That is, between the exact moment of time in which the viewer is confronted with the present – or its illusion for that matter – and the eternal time, which never ends but concludes in abstraction. Stingel thus moves painting one step further, understanding that it carries energy and consumes it, and that abstraction happens when the power goes off momentarily.

  • 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.

    View More Works

303

Untitled

1990
Acrylic and enamel on canvas.
70 7/8 x 98 1/4 in. (180 x 249.6 cm).

Estimate
£100,000 - 150,000 

Sold for £356,000

Contemporary Art Evening Sale

Evening Sale
13 October 2007, 4pm
London