Integrating both mechanical and analogue processes, Christopher Wool is back with a show at Gagosian Gallery, presenting recent works on paper, prints and sculptures at the gallery’s London premises.

The range of processes employed in each of Wool’s multilayered works on paper reveals the extraordinary breadth of his artistic strategies. He began to silkscreen his own works in the 1990s, flattening an image and applying it to canvas before adding gestures of paint.

This approach has become more complex over time, as the artist explores the effects of repetition, scale, rhythm, and different means of overpainting, such as the looping line of an industrial spray gun. Further to these expressive marks of paint, Wool drags turpentine-soaked rags over the painted surface to efface his images in a haze of gray mist.

In contrast to the monochrome palette he is often associated with, at this show Wool imbues various works with pastel hues. By erasing, collaging, overpainting, and digitally modifying imagery from previous works, he creates something vitally new through a process of self-replication.

The cursive line of Wool’s sculptures—shown initially in his landmark survey at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, in 2013/14—echoes the gestural marks of his paintings. Four intimate and two large-scale sculptures in copper-plated steel and bronze are on view here.

Their genesis lies in the arid landscape of Texas, where Wool divides his time between Marfa and New York. Wool collected pieces of old fencing and hay-baling wire for years before realizing their sculptural potential. At times these remain as found, and at others they are transformed into new forms and reimagined on a dramatic scale. Wool purposefully leaves details of the processes visible, such as welded joints, to stress the handmade quality of his works.

CHRISTOPHER WOOL
GAGOSIAN GALLERY
LONDON
www.gagosian.com

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