Rudolf Stingel

What can painting be? Rudolf Stingel constantly asks himself this question, and always rethinks it anew. Born in 1956 in Merano, Italy, in 1987 he moved to New York, where he still lives and works today. Since the start of his career in the late 1980s, he has been exploring artistic processes— often going beyond the traditional understanding
of painting. He probes the possibilities of painting in the interplay of materials and textures. After his major solo shows in 2007 at the Museum of Con- temporary Art in Chicago and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, he caused a sen- sation in Venice in 2013, when he covered all the walls and floors of the Palazzo Grassi with an orien- tal rug printed carpet. 

“I am demonstrating that using different surfaces, we can produce very diverse environments.” 

Rudolf Stingel regularly intervenes in entire gallery and museum spaces. The present work is a fragment of the wall-to-wall, multi-room installation, constructed of Celotex insulation boards, which Stingel created for his major 2019 summer show at the Fondation Beyeler. On that occasion, he trans- formed parts of the exhibit, as well as the restau- rant, into a silver-colored installation—and also into a palimpsest, into which visitors could literally inscribe themselves.