The core of painting, its processes, functions and meanings are at the centre of Christopher Wool's work. The artist, who sees himself primarily as an abstract painter, uses a wide variety of techniques that include spray paint or solvents as well as the paint rollers usually used for wallpaper patterns. In the mid-1980s, Wool began his "pattern paintings" and finally his "word paintings", in which he transferred selected words and statements in black capital letters onto white painting surfaces using stencils. The rules of punctuation are deliberately negated and new blank spaces are set. Individual letters appear fragmented, others blurred. Omissions and overpaintings are characteristic of Wool's approach. Additionally, the artist uses his own photographs, which he processes in an act of appropriation, and screen-prints to add new layers to his compositions. Eventually, his works are always a reflection of urban life.
Christopher Wool (born 1955 in Chicago) moved to New York in the 1970s, where he studied at the New York Studio School and found inspiration for his art in the urban milieu with its diverse subcultural currents. After a solo show at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 1989, further solo museum exhibitions followed, e.g. at the MOCA Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; Kunsthalle Basel, Basel; Camden Arts Centre, London; Museum Ludwig, Cologne; Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Paris; Guggenheim Museum, New York; the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago; and The Broad, Los Angeles. Works by the artist are included in the following collections: Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Hirshhorn Museum, Washington, D.C.; Musée d'Art Contemporain, Montreal; Tate, London; Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zurich; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Museum Brandhorst, Munich; Albertina, Vienna.
