Last week I have made my debut visit to GAGOSYAN Art Gallery in NYC, 980 Madison Avenue. I consider myself as very lucky because in my first visit I have got a chance to get acquainted with one of the most successful and prominent modern artists – Rudolf Stingle. Rudolf Stingel is an American visual artist who was born in 1956. He has had numerous gallery and museum exhibitions, including at the Whitechapel Art Gallery and at the Gagosian Gallery, New York (980 Madison Avenue). Many works by the artist have been sold at auction, including ‘Untitled (After Sam)’ sold at Christie’s New York ‘Post-War & Contemporary Evening Sale’ in 2017 for $10,551,500. There have been numerous articles about Rudolf Stingel, including ‘On View | A Magic Carpet Ride in a Venetian Palazzo’ written by Kevin Mcgarry for New York Times Magazine in 2013. His works are in art collections of Whitney Museum of American Art,  New York, Museum of Modern Art, NY, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, Centre Georges  Pompidou, Paris, Tate Modern, London. There is also a long list of numerous awards and other achievements.

I was particularly lucky because I could see his latest works – exhibited at GAGOSYAN these days – November/December 2017. Most of his works are called “untitled” . Doing my research about his biography and artworks I have found a great website – mutualart.com – where  you can find many artists, their art portfolio,  biographies, articles and even prices for their artwork. I  am very impressed by his  latest and just stunning works below

 

 

 These are  large paintings ( oil) in three parts. I check his art works and most of them are abstract and/or ornamental. These particular paintings above  can be considered as a new height in his artistic endeavours – the skies don’t look abstract, they are  very natural,  leaving a stunning impression of as very realistic. I found the scale of the paintings, colours  and brush strokes as epic, immense, immaculate, brave and  precise,  giving  a fantastic feeling of complete immersion into the skies. They seem very real and unreal at the same time.

Rudolf Stingel is very famous with his scale of artistic thinking – his paintings are grandiose. Below is his notable artwork , one of  5 pieces –  Tyrolean Alps. I found an interesting article in New York Times edition 19/04/2014 by Ken Johnson:

“Rudolf Stingel’s five giant paintings of Tyrolean Alps in this exhibition are impressively glamorous. For all their expansive theatricality, however, they hew to a familiar set of academic routines.

Made on canvases up to 15 feet wide, the paintings are copied in shades of gray from antique black-and-white photographs of snowy, rocky mountains near Merano, Italy, the town where Mr. Stingel was born in 1956. Several levels of ambiguity come into play. For one thing, you see the paintings both as pictures of mountains and as pictures of old photographs.”

I was also very much attracted to  another  latest artwork of Rudolf Stingle below

It was quite surprising for  me to discover that modern artists do like highly decorative paintings with ornaments because this is exactly what I plan to do: I love ornament as a  main element of decoration and I will do a number of my OCA’s assignments, following my interest in ornaments. These particular artwork is  amazing with its colours, amount of work, elegance and precision of  hand work. His latest work above is a kind of  “made to perfection” of his previous artworks which contained  abstract ornamental motives- you can find them on mutualart.com

 

This artist is vey versatile in terms of his art experiments – he does artworks as oil paintings and he does installations,  using modern unconventional materials like Celotex insulation board. I do place below some reference about his artistic techniques:

“Stingel became first recognised in the late 1980s for his monochromatic works, silvery paintings with undertones of red, yellow or blue from 1987 to 1994. Stingel’s later abstract paintings from the 1990s consist of oils in pure, brilliant colors exuberantly splayed, dripped, pressed, and pulled across a black field. The works begin with the application of a thick layer of paint in a particular colour to the canvas. Pieces of gauze are then placed over the surface of the canvas and silver paint is added using a spray gun. Finally, the gauze is removed, resulting in a richly textured surface. For his works on paper Stingel is known for a technique of applying oil paint and/or enamel onto canvas or paper through a tulle screen. At the Venice Biennale in 1989, he published an illustrated “do-it-yourself” manual in English, Italian, German, French, Spanish and Japanese, ‘Instructions, Istruzioni, Anleitung…’, outlining the equipment and procedure that would enable anyone to create one of his paintings. In so doing, he suggests that everyone could produce a work of abstraction by following a simple set of instructions.”

I also must include  his artwork below as a demonstration of his style and technique.

“Untiteld”  2014 – electroformed copper, plated nickel and gold, in 4 parts, each 120*120 cm and 240*240 cm overall. This artwork was succefully auctioned in 2017.

Reference list:

1) gagosyan.com

2)https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/rudolf-stingel-11279

3) artnet.com 

4)https://www.fondationbeyeler.ch/en/exhibitions/rudolf-stingel/