Untitled, 2019

The subject of Untitled, 2019, is taken from Rudolf Stingel’s 1989 artist book titled Instructions. In this step-by-step photographic description, he explains in six languages how his abstract paintings are made. One of the last steps is the application of silver paint with an airbrush onto a canvas coated with oil paint and covered with tulle. Instructions provides readers with the techniques of how to make a Rudolf Stingel work; at the same time, it highlights the ambivalence between the original and the copy. Stingel’s photorealistic paintings are always the result of a rendering process. An existing image, in this case, a black and -white photograph that he himself commissioned, is transposed onto another medium, namely, a large-format painting. Here, the transformation is particularly evident: the airbrush, the painter’s tool, is painted, and the canvas visible in the Instructions’ photograph is enlarged and translated back into an actual canvas.

Untitled, 2013

Poised in the center of the picture is a realistically painted red fox in a snowy landscape. The reference for the work is from an old German calendar in which each of the weekly pages shows a different animal in its natural surroundings. Untitled, 2013, with its precise brush stroke, meticulously reproduces the photographic original, adopting all its imperfections. The work is part of a series for which Stingel copied animal portraits from the same calendar—an owl, a woodpecker, and a wild boar, all native to the Alpine landscape—each in the identical square format. The motif of the fox appears familiar and is linked with numerous stories, ranging from its role in mythology and fairy tales to completely subjective associations.

Untitled, 2015

A ghostlike figure with a wide-open mouth, deep eye sockets, and arms flung upward in dismay or fright gazes unexpectedly out of the painting at the viewer. The figure is shrouded in a cloak of white fabric suggesting both presence and absence. This visual motif derives from the image of an old marionette that the artist transposed into a painting. He then spread out the painted canvas on his studio floor to expose it to the most varied influences. The dynamic superimpositions on the picture surface illustrate the element of process within the artistic work and the crossing of boundaries between figuration and abstraction.

Untitled, 2012

The paintings in this room were made in a multilayered process—an artistic method that we encounter time and again in Stingel’s work. In this group of works, the so-called Serapi carpet pattern was applied with oil paint and enamel onto a canvas whose surface had already been covered by different layers of paint. Here, along with the processual aspect, Stingel’s typical approach of working in series also takes on tangible form. Rather than concentrating on the individual work as such, the artist instead produces a whole series of comparable and interrelated pictures dealing with a particular motif. The individual visual motif can reappear in different variations. The Serapi pattern seen here was used not only for this group of paintings but also in several creative phases for the overlapping of photorealistic painted motifs such as portraits and landscapes.

Untitled, 2010

As a model for his landscape painting, Rudolf Stingel often uses found, historical photographs and their material qualities in the painting process. Hence, in this painting of a peak in the South Tyrolean Alps, we notice not only the attention to detail in the rendering itself but also the dust and scratches accumulated on the surface of the original photographic model. Memories and traces take on a central role in the artist’s work, evidence of exploration on the autobiographical plane, as well as of both conscious and unconscious processes. The dynamics between control and chance become themselves the subject of investigation through the medium of painting.

Untitled, 2010

The three luminous, matte gold paintings reveal this creative process in multilayered form, such as in the juxtaposition of light and dark or of occupied and unoccupied areas. Landscapes emerge—entirely specific and at the same time completely abstract—that open up a view of perspectival space.

Untitled (After Sam), 2006

Hanging on the walls of this encompassing carpet installation (see Text 13) is a colossal portrait of the artist, as melancholic as it is solemn, large and overwhelming like a movie screen. Rudolf Stingel poses as the protagonist of a film. Rather than a self-portrait, it is a meticulously painted reproduction of a photograph by his fellow artist Sam Samore, hence the reference in its title After Sam.

Untitled, 2018

In Untitled, 2018, a magnified flower field extends across three large panels, taking the form of a classical triptych. The gaze wanders over the painted floral landscape with pink roses and peonies, white lilies and daisies, blue chrysanthemums, and red poppies. The rhythm of the painting is based on the photographic representation of a mid-nineteenth century wallpaper.

SOUND INTERVENTION BY ANTONY GENN, MARTIN SLATTERY AND JOHNNY TOMLINSON

The British musicians and composers create an electronic soundscape, which unfolds by degrees inside the exhibition in relation to Rudolf Stingel’s works. Sound interventions in hall 5 at 1 / 3 / 5 p.m

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