The Guggenheim - Christopher Wool

We visited the Guggenheim, where a Christopher Wool exhibition is showing.

My first impression was of course, of the Frank Lloyd Wright designed building. It's visually stunning, both inside and out, and it definitely stands out among the more austere buildings on the 'Museum Mile'. 

Wool's work felt almost out of place. A lot of stencil art, with non aesthetic punk and pop art influence, it seemed to clash with the white walled sterile museum space. One of the first works I noticed said "FOOL".

I couldn't shake the feeling through the whole exhibition that Wool was calling us fools for looking at his work in a gallery. There is a strong influence from the street in Wool's work. The stencils are reminiscent of those that can be seen on almost any city street, photocopies akin to photocopied flyers, paintings resembling the graffiti covered wall of a derelict house. There was no artifice in his influences, they come straight from the streets of New York, and perhaps Wool thinks we're fools for paying money to go into a nice gallery and look at what we walk past on the street every day? He tells us that if we can't take a joke we should get the fuck out of his house. The joke is most certainly on us, and the art gallery is his house now. 

In one of the final works of the exhibit, Wool questions if there is even a meaning to the artwork. "The harder you look, the harder you look." Is he telling us that there's no meaning, and the harder we look for one, the less we'll find? But if so, surely that itself gives the work meaning.

Walking the streets of New York, I could see the how the city had influenced Wool's work, which makes it all the stranger to see it in a gallery.