Graves International Art - Christopher Wool

Christopher Wool (born 1955, Boston) is an American artist. Since the 1980s, Wool's art has incorporated issues surrounding post-conceptual ideas. He lives and works in New York City and Marfa, Texas, together with his wife and fellow painter Charline von Heyl.

Wool is best known for his paintings of large, black, stenciled letters on white canvases. Wool began to create word paintings in the late 1980s, reportedly after having seen graffiti on a brand new white truck. Using a system of alliteration, with the words often broken up by a grid system, or with the vowels removed (as in ‘TRBL’ or ‘DRNK’), Wool’s word paintings often demand reading aloud to make sense.

At 303 Gallery in 1988, Wool and fellow artist Robert Gober presented a collaborative exhibition and installation which included Wool's seminal text-based painting, Apocalypse Now (1988). The work features words from a famous line in Francis Ford Coppola's film Apocalypse Now, based on the Joseph Conrad novel Heart of Darkness. From the early 1990s through the present, the silkscreen has been a primary tool in Wool’s practice. In his abstract paintings Wool brings together figures and the disfigured, drawing and painting, spontaneous impulses and well thought-out ideas. He draws lines on the canvas with a spray gun and then, directly after, wipes them out again with a rag drenched in solvent to give a new picture in which clear lines have to stand their own against smeared surfaces.

GIA Gallery Poster Disclaimer:
Not to be confused with thousands of contemporary inkjet/giclée/digital reproductions ignorantly or deliberately passed off as originals on the market today. The examples we offer here are the original period vintage (exhibition) posters, created and designed by, or under the supervision and authorization of the artist or their respective estate (posthumously), for various exhibitions and events in which they participated. If applicable, this poster is also fully documented within its respective artists' official catalogue raisonné of authentic graphic works, prints, and or posters.