"Meet Artist Christopher Wool" by Nicolas Trembley

Meet artist Christopher Wool, the master who creates tension between painting and erasing, gesture and removal

Last June, Belgian gallerist Xavier Hufkens inaugurated the opening of his new space with a show by Christopher Wool (born 1955, lives in New York and Marfa, Texas). In this exclusive interview, Wool told Numéro Art about his idiosyncratic practice, which mixes and plays with all sorts of media and techniques.

Nicolas Trembley: After minimalism and conceptualism, the early 1980s saw the arrival of figurative artists. But you weren’t part of this discourse?

Christopher Wool: No, I think there was still a painting discourse. The late 1970s might have been a slow time in the art world, but when the Pictures Generation started showing – Julian Schnabel’s first show, etc. – there was a lot of dialogue about what was going on. 

Would you say you come more from the Pictures Generation, with photography and film, or from painting? People tend to talk more about your paintings... 

Yes, I know. I came from the Studio School in New York, a more traditional, painting-oriented background. A lot of Pictures Generation artists rejected painting. I think I was just young enough – I was a year or two younger – that by the time the idea of rejecting painting had settled in, I didn’t need to. I could learn from them, the issues they brought up were important, but it didn’t stop me from painting. 

You work with different media. Do you feel more at ease with a particular one or is it about the combination? 

No, I think I’m still a painter mostly. Sculpture is new to me. Richard Prince described his use of photography as “practising without a licence”. I think that’s a great description, because I don’t think I come to photography like a pho-tographer would. It’s maybe the same for sculpture: I have to get used to three dimensions, it’s new to me. 

Read full interview at numero.com