At the heart of Christopher Wool's creative project, which spans three decades of highly focused practice, is the question of how a picture can be conceived, realized and experienced today. Engaging the complexities of painting as a medium, as well as the anxious rhythms of the urban environment and a wide range of cultural references, his agile, largely monochrome works propose an open-ended series of responses to this central problem. Published on the occasion of the artist's retrospective at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, organized by Katherine Brinson, Associate Curator, and supported by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, this exhibition catalogue presents a rich selection of paintings, photographs and works on paper, forming the most comprehensive examination of Wool's career to date. This fully illustrated publication includes essays by Katherine Brinson, Suzanne Hudson, Richard Prince and James Rondeau, as well as a definitive bibliography and exhibition history.
Christopher Wool was born and brought up in Chicago. In the early 1970s he moved to New York, where he studied painting intermittently and worked as an assistant to the artist Joel Shapiro. His first show was at the Cable Gallery, New York, in 1984. Since then he has exhibited internationally, including the 1989 Whitney Biennial, Documenta9, Birth of the Cool, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, Kunsthalle Basel and the Secession Gallery in Vienna.