Rudolf Stingel

Installation view

Courtesy the Whitney Museum of American Art

Every once in a while an artist comes along who defies the tautological dead end of art about art. Rudolf Stingel, the current subject of a much-deserved midcareer survey at the Whitney Museum of American Art, is just such a figure. Expanding the notion of what we can expect from painting, Stingel proves that Conceptual art can be sensual and unpretentious without resorting to a flurry of art-historical quotation. This exhibition, which originated at Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art, where it was organized by Francesco Bonami, presents work made by Stingel between 1987 and 2007 (mostly untitled).

Whitney curator Chrissie Iles gives us a pitch-perfect installation, beautifully realized in the carefully calibrated marriage of work to space, which in Stingel’s case is key. The Italian-born artist (who now lives in New York) has long blurred the lines between architecture and painting in order to challenge the limits of his medium; his use of nontraditional materials—Styrofoam, insulation board, carpet, etc.—accomplishes much the same. And while the practical details that went into Iles’s efforts may be lost on the viewer, their impact is not.

The first work encountered makes this crystal clear. Stepping out of the elevator, one is immediately immersed in an all-over physical field of silver: three surrounding walls covered in floor-to-ceiling panels of aluminum-colored Celotex (the gallery’s gray slate floor adds to this feeling of immersion). Lit by a giant chandelier, this baroque spectacle of shimmery reflection is shamelessly seductive, but it’s also meant to be defiled (or improved upon, depending on your perspective) as the graffitied walls evidence. Viewers are encouraged to gouge, paint, collage, incise and otherwise mark their presence, an invitation to participate that sets the whole tone for the exhibition. Suggesting the role of time and public intervention in the evolution of his work, Stingel counters ideas that painting should be self-referential and transcendent. Looking at the tags and signs left behind by visitors—an Egyptian eye in a traced hand; a taped-up drawing of a basketball player; a scribbled penelope inside a two-inch hole made by scraping out the entirety of the board’s surface; a noosed figure in pink marker—one understands that Stingel accomplishes this by calling into question notions of beauty and taste.

His bubble-gum-pink Styrofoam panel paintings (2000–2003), for example—in which the artist scoops out (by hand or with tools) patterns reminiscent of those made in nature, like spiderwebs or ant tracks—are large-scale, tactile works obviously rooted in the process of their making. But despite deliberate references to the gestural mark-making of abstract painting, they never deny their material origins. Another series in which Stingel dipped his shoes in paint thinner and walked across sections of Styrofoam to leave a wake of footprints similarly invites us to consider the power of the rote and the tacky.

This sensual contemplation of the mundane takes center stage in a room that features three gold wallpaper paintings surrounding a mirrored floor, which repeats and multiplies their decorative patterns. Confounding the line between architecture and decor in a manner reminiscent of rococo art, Stingel once again makes viewers an integral part of the work via their reflections.

The earliest paintings on view date from the late 1980s and depict monochromatic fields of pure blue and red overlaid with silver spray paint. Their incandescent, satin-like surfaces—full of nuances of texture, color and line—seem the height of sublimity. In reality, they’re made with a simple mechanical process that anyone can mimic. Indeed, Stingel originally devised a manual for exactly this purpose, a booklet titled Instructions, which he would frequently exhibit alongside these works. The Whitney doesn’t include it here, unfortunately, which deprives visitors of being in on Stingel’s joke.

Not all of Stingel’s art is playful. His recent series of self-portraits­—giant black-and-white images rendered in a deadpan Photorealism—are full of melancholia. Based on pictures taken by artist Sam Samore, they present Stingel as a pensive figure lying in bed, wearing a suit­—tired and weary, perhaps, from creating so much vigorously generous art. Indeed, as one of those rare exhibitions devoted to a less-than-famous artist who appeals to connoisseur and general public alike, this Rudolf Stingel survey is a real gift.