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Property from a Private American Collection33Rudolf StingelUntitledsigned and dated 'Stingel 2011' on the reverse oil and enamel on linen 241.7 x 193.2 cm (95 1/8 x 76 1/8 in.) Executed in 2011. Full CataloguingEstimate £800,000 - 1,200,000 ‡ ♠ Place Advance BidContact Specialist Kate Bryan Specialist, Head of Evening Sale +44 20 7318 4026 kbryan@phillips.com
OverviewWith its colossal, shimmering surface emanating purple and silver hues, Untitled is an exquisite example of Rudolf Stingel’s abstract works – specifically his carpet installations and wallpaper paintings, which utilise familiar, decorative patterns to blend into their surroundings. Looming before the viewer like a fragment of a mural, fresco or wallpaper, Untitled combines the graphic power of its declarative colours, and the inconspicuous demeanour of its domestic likeness. Created by spraying paint and enamel onto canvas with meticulously positioned stencils, the composition demonstrates Stingel’s experimental approach to the medium, which he continually cultivated throughout his career, reaching its apotheosis with his celebrated series of Carpet Paintings. Deftly balanced between visual indulgence and critical commentary on image-making, the artist’s paintings from this period, as well as his subsequent gilded and ornamented formulations, work in the legacy of Gerhard Richter Andy Warhol and Robert Rauschenberg Executed in 2011, the composition thematically presages one of Stingel's most prodigious and ambitious projects: his 2013 solo presentation at the Palazzo Grassi, Venice, wherein he lined most of the palazzo's spaces — the vast atrium and the two floors of enfiladed galleries overlooking it — with synthetic carpet boasting the repeated, enlarged facsimile of an Ottoman carpet. 'For nearly 20 years [Stingel] has made work that seduces the eye while also upending most notions of what, exactly, constitutes a painting, how it should be made and by whom … He combines a love of painting with the postmodern suspicion of it.' —Roberta Smith Over the last four decades, Stingel has forged a unique visual language that evidences the symbiotic relationship between viewing and making. Perpetually interrogating the artistic process through a shrewd experimentation with textiles, metals, oil paint and stencils, the artist has offered a novel understanding of artistic authorship in postmodern times. Situated at the threshold of painterly craft and the conceptual readymade, the artist’s Carpet Paintings posit as the culmination of his artistic investigation – the apex of his imaginative and creative powers. Installation view of Rudolf Stingel’s exhibition at Palazzo Grassi, 5 April – 31 December 2013. Photo: Barbara Zanon/Getty Images. ‘A Carpet is a Painting, A Painting is a Carpet’ Stingel’s vast carpet installations, most famously installed in Grand Central Terminal under the facetious name ‘Plan B’ in 2004, have become powerful visual symbols for his playful and inventive oeuvre. Echoing these large-scale, site-specific exercises, Stingel’s similarly themed paintings equally engage the viewer’s sense of awareness in relation to spatial environment. Rising high above the viewer’s eye, Untitled exemplifies the artist's ability to remain fastidiously attentive to detail and surface quality, whilst simultaneously combining graphic impact and physical grandeur. Utilising reproductions of traditional patterns, the artist infers a nostalgic and time‐worn effect that is immediately tied to the aesthetic attached to ornamental rugs. Transporting pattern to the forefront of his work, the artist draws inspiration from the rich history of decorative arts and architecture, celebrating the achievements of artisanal craftsmanship – a knowledge and fascination that can be traced back to his upbringing in the Italian Tyrol and Vienna, where he was exposed to a fusion of Baroque and Rococo aesthetics at an early age. As Francesco Bonami notes: ‘a carpet is a painting, and a painting is a carpet. It is only our position in relation to them that changes. Our relation to life, to a painting or to a carpet, is the same relation we have to the earth we stand on: it moves but we don’t feel it’.i Hans Memling Fleurs dans un vase (Flowers in a Jug), c. 1485, oil on wood, Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, Madrid. Image: Bridgeman Images. i Frances