Christopher Wool
Christopher Wool's exhibition "See Stop Run." Courtesy of the artist.
Ever since the white-cube setting for fine art was conceived, artists have strived to break free of its strictures. A new exhibition by post-Modern artist Christopher Wool, taking place at a vacant and very raw lower Manhattan office space, adds a stellar new entry to a lengthy list. Some 72 pieces, mostly dating from the last several years and none for sale, are now on display in “See Stop Run,” on the 19th floor of a Financial District office tower.
The show runs until July 31. The artist’s quest for an atypical space started in January 2023. Wool and his curator, Anne Pontégnie, scoured the streets, first with the help of real estate brokers, then on their own. (They also had the help of the artist Rose Marcus and another associate.) The brokers were showing them spaces that were too glossy. Helping to narrow things down, they soon realized that ground-floor spaces smacked too much of retail, while residential spaces seemed too private. They also ruled out the neighborhoods of Chelsea and Tribeca because they didn’t want to appear among the art galleries, not wanting to be seen as a provocation to them.
They had their work cut out for them in surveying empty spaces; the island hit a record high office vacancy rate in 2023, with about 94 million square feet, or 17.4 percent, vacant. This emptiness is reminiscent of another one—the city was in a slump when Wool arrived in New York to attend art school in 1973. The metropolis remains wildly expensive despite the surge of vacancy and fallow acreage.
The raw space is deeply attractive in its own right. Wires hang from the ceiling; areas of drywall have been punched out; graffiti is everywhere, some phallic, some in contractor language; work permits hang on the wall; floors are uneven. These features complement the rough qualities of Wool’s work.
Those works take the form of sculptures, prints, and photographs, almost all untitled. All exemplify a central characteristic of his work; as he puts it, “Each and every work in the exhibition is initiated in some sense by a reproduction of a previous work.”
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