Rudolf Stingel, born in Merano in 1956, divides his time between his hometown and New York City. He rose to prominence in the late 1980s with his monochrome works, silver paintings with hints of red, yellow, and blue, created from 1987 to 1994. In the Nineties, he shifted towards using pure oil colors applied in various methods – spread, pressed or dripped – onto a black canvas. These works are distinguished by an initial thick layer of paint, overlaid with multiple pieces of gauze. A second coat of paint, typically silver, is then applied using a spray gun. Afterward, the gauze is removed, resulting in a textured and intricate surface.
In the late 1980s, Stingel also delved into a series of works on paper. Employing a technique involving the application of oil paint and enamel through a tulle screen, he crafted monochrome paintings bearing distinct textures or patterns (as seen in Untitled, 1998). Notably, at the 1989 Venice Biennale, he released a multilingual illustrated manual titled Instructions, Instructions, Anleitung…, available in English, Italian, German, French, Spanish, and Japanese. This manual detailed the necessary equipment and procedures, enabling anyone to replicate one of his paintings. Through this gesture, the artist suggests that abstract art creation is accessible to anyone willing to follow straightforward instructions.
In the early 1990s, Stingel created his series of radiator from translucent cast resin infused with orange acrylic paint during the casting process. These sculptures, resembling ordinary radiators, transcend their utilitarian function, exuding a luminous quality reminiscent of marbled embers. Simultaneously, Stingel explored the intersection of painting and space. He pioneered numerous installations during this period, wherein exhibition spaces’ walls and floors were enveloped in monochrome or black-and-white carpets, effectively transforming architectural settings into immersive paintings. For instance, in 1993, he presented a vast orange plush carpet affixed to the wall at the Venice Biennale. A decade later, he adorned the Italian Pavilion with a silver room at the same exhibition.
Subsequently, Stingel continued this exploration with Plan B site-specific in 2004, which involved covering the floors of Vanderbilt Hall at Grand Central Terminal and the Walker Art Center with industrially printed pink and blue floral carpets. In 2007, as part of a retrospective exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago and the Whitney Museum of American Art, Stingel invited viewers to engage directly with his art. He covered gallery walls with Celotex metal insulating panels, encouraging visitors to draw, write, and leave imprints on the panels’ surface. This gesture relinquished the traditional notion of artistic ownership, empowering collective participation and blurring the distinction between creator and audience. Stingel’s exploration of spatial installations extends to encompassing the entire roof of a room in the Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt, where he adorned bright red and silver insulation panels with a traditional damask wallpaper pattern. Additionally, for the 2013 Venice Biennale, he transformed Palazzo Grassi by lining it with a Persian-inspired carpet, upon which he displayed a curated selection of both abstract and figurative paintings.
Through these immersive works, Stingel prompts viewers to engage in a dialogue about the visual interpretation of art and to contemplate various issues surrounding the current state of painting. These include questions of authenticity, hierarchies within the art world, the significance of meaning, and the influence of context. By delving into the process of artistic creation, which involves unconventional materials such as Styrofoam, carpets, polyurethane, rubber, and mirrors, Stingel challenges and provokes the audience to reconsider the traditional boundaries of the medium of painting.
Starting in the early 2000s, Stingel embarked on a performative painting process. He covered his studio floor entirely with Styrofoam polystyrene panels and walked on them while wearing boots soaked in lacquer thinner. As each step pressed down, the polystyrene melted, leaving behind visible imprints. Selected panels were then arranged into various sizes, ranging from single to monumental panes. From 2005 onwards, Stingel delved into a series of paintings inspired by photographic portraits, notably exemplified by his portrayal of gallery owner Paula Cooper in Untitled (2005). The following year, he turned to black-and-white photographic self-portraits based on Sam Samore’s original photographs, resulting in the series Untitled (After Sam) (2005-06). In 2010, Stingel debuted a series of grand landscape paintings at the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin. These paintings were based on vintage photographs depicting scenes from Merano or the Tyrolean Alps.
In addition to the already mentioned exhibitions, between the mid-1990s and mid-2000s Stingel’s works were exhibited in Italy and abroad, at the Neue Galerie in Graz (1994), Kunsthalle in Zurich (1995), Paula Cooper Gallery in New York (2002), EURAC Tower in Bolzano (2005) and Inverleith House in Edinburgh (2013).