Confronted with empty white walls, visitors instead could consider the pictorial qualities of the architectural interior. In 1991, Stingel installed a bright orange carpet in Daniel Newberg Gallery, activating the space in an unprecedented way.
In his screenprints of these years, Stingel created impressions using folded and creased tulle, then sprayed over the compositions with silver spray paint. In 1989, he completed Instructions, a limited-edition manual explaining (in several languages) how to make one of his silver paintings, abstract canvases with undertones of red, yellow, or blue. Often dealing with subjects of time, memory, and perception, he embraces industrial materials and ornamental design as vehicles for formal exploration and provoked coincidence, whereby the final state of certain installations is determined by the participation of the viewer.īorn in Merano, Italy, Stingel grew up in the Tyrolean Alps, a mountainous region where Austria, Italy, and Switzerland meet. I wouldn’t know where to say intervention stops and destruction begins.įrom his captivatingly realistic oil paintings to his innovative use of Celotex, Styrofoam, carpet, and aluminum, Rudolf Stingel challenges traditional notions of what constitutes a painting.