Christopher Wool
Installation view. Courtesy of the artist.
In John Berger’s seminal 1972 book Ways of Seeing, the critic wrote, “We never look at just one thing; we are always looking at the relation between things and ourselves.” Every image, every artwork, he argued, memorializes “a way of seeing” that is wholly distinct to the artist. Likewise, a viewer’s “perception or appreciation of an image” depends upon her lived experiences, her taste, her preferences—her own way of seeing. If the unyielding walls of “the white cube” amplify these differences between artist, viewer, and subject, what happens when an exhibition space is in such harmony with the artist’s aesthetic that the viewer adopts the artist’s “way of seeing” entirely? This is the question hovering over Christopher Wool’s rightly celebrated “See Stop Run,” a survey of self-referential sculptures, photographs, and mixed-media paintings that appear to have emerged from the exposed wall cavities and spooled electrical wiring adorning the gutted space where they are exquisitely hung.
For his largest exhibition since 2014, on view through July 31, Wool sought a space “that was not neutral,” said curator Anne Pontégnie, a place that “lets the city in a little.” Indeed, there is nothing neutral about the 19th floor of 101 Greenwich Street, an overlooked former office space in the depths of FiDi. After a lengthy search across Manhattan, Wool and his team settled on this unsophisticated—but expansive—space, located in 1907 Beaux-Arts building only blocks away from the Freedom Tower. Like Wool’s jagged wire sculptures whose looping curves and barbed edges feel equal parts raw and refined as if one stumbled upon them in nature, the 18,000 square foot construction zone housing “See Stop Run” is a site of discovery. No press release is present, no wall labels, no exhibition summary adhered to a glistening white wall. Instead, a hazardous mix of chunked-up concrete, graffiti scrawled in jest (the requisite penis included), and patterned cakes of peeling paint decorate this shell of a space, establishing a calculated framework through which viewers must encounter Wool’s work.
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