Untitled (RIOT, 1990)

Private collection.

Enamel on aluminum.

The subversive nature of Wool’s post-conceptual art is best reflected in the immediacy of the word “Riot”. The content of his art is a rebellious challenge to the very content of contemporary art as an artistic practice. The outrageously provocative but artistically seductive and conceptually brilliant monolith of capital letters shows the anarchist beginning of the paintings of Wool. The expressive nature of the charged word conveys violence or threat. It is visually reflected in the fragmentation of the four-letter word into its constituent parts and in the placement of the letters “two by two”. This immediately opens up an opportunity to read in different permutations, offers multiple interpretations of the main word. Its exclamation quality is no longer a purely linguistic phenomenon due to the rectangular sharpness of the format of the work itself.