Christopher Wool

Art Brokerage: Christopher Wool American Artist: b. 1955. Christopher Wool was born in 1955. He studied at Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York, New York Studio School and New York University. Wool is known for his paintings of large, black, stenciled letters on a white canvas resembling a sign or billboard. Although his most recognizable works are those with the black lettering, Wool started out by painting in drips and splatters like Pollock. He ventured through phases of flower and leaf motifs before arriving at his own style. Christopher Wool has become known for stencil-like word-pictures, as well as for pictures with vine and flower prints ranging to wallpaper-like patterns. Here he superimposes layers of screen prints, imprints, painting and spray. The text works, beginning in 1987, illustrate the limitations of language and its symbolic meaning. Some of these are "RIOT", "PRANKSTER" or "SELL THE HOUSE SELL THE CAR SELL THE KIDS". Wool gives the words of these text paintings, whose legibility is concealed through the constraints of the picture and the placement of the letters, a reinterpretation. The word as a plastic material in painting is always in contrast to the word as syntax. One of the themes here is the unspeakable, in other words the constant failure of language. In the early 90s Wool expanded this form of typography by an apparently decorative ornamentation, which is reminiscent of rolled and imprinted wallpaper patterns. Listings wanted.