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PROPERTY from the pisces trust CHRISTOPHER WOOL (b. 1955) UNTITLED enamel on aluminum 96 x 72 in....

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PROPERTY from the pisces trust CHRISTOPHER WOOL (b. 1955) UNTITLED enamel on aluminum 96 x 72 in....
PROPERTY from
the pisces trust
CHRISTOPHER WOOL
(b. 1955)
UNTITLED
enamel on aluminum
96 x 72 in. (244 x 183 cm)
executed in 1990
ESTIMATE: $200,000-300,000

PROVENANCE
Galerie Max Hetzler, Hamburg

EXHIBITED
Donaueschingen, Fürstenburg Sammlugen, AHEAD OF THE 21st CENTURY: THE PISCES COLLECTION, June 2002-October 2004, p. 197, no. 157 (illustrated)

LITERATURE
U. Grosenick, Fürstenburg Sammlugen, AHEAD OF THE 21st CENTURY: THE PISCES COLLECTION, ostfildern-ruit, 2002, p. 197, no. 157 (illustrated)
Appearing in 1987, Christopher Wool's "word" paintings "beat on the very crux of symbolic meaning, through their focus on language. That the predominant pictorial elements in these paintings are words only complicates this art's purported intent to clearly "speak," for inherent in any viewer's reception is the experiential fact of reading and looking as simultaneously exclusive acts. The word as plastic material - as shape, medium, and color - will always rub against the word as syntax and conjurer of mental images. Wool deliberately choreographs a collision between different components of language - grammatical, semantic, visual, imaginary, and spoken - that conveys an emotional magnitude beyond the range of everyday speech and closer in spirit to the true proportions of Wool's subject; the inherent inefficacy and near-constant failure of language. These paintings may contain words - the building blocks by which we identify, analyze, and enunciate - but instead of information, we are given a physical record of disarticulation.
A. Goldstein, CHRISTOPHER WOOL, LOS ANGELES, 1999, p. 267