Christopher Wool exhibit at Guggenheim through Jan. 22

Installation view: Christopher Wool, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, through Jan. 22. Photo: Kristopher McKay © Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York.

NEW YORK – The Guggenheim Museum’s comprehensive retrospective of the influential American artist Christopher Wool will remain on view through Jan. 22.

From his early use of bold text and patterns to his recent abstract works created through collage, erasure and digital manipulation, Wool’s largely monochrome paintings, photographs and works on paper conduct a dynamic investigation into what it means to make a picture today.

Since his emergence in the 1980s, Christopher Wool has forged an agile, highly focused practice that ranges across processes and mediums, paying special attention to the complexities of painting. Each new work is a site of restless experimentation in which Wool continually disrupts and renews the term of his artistic production.

The survey fills the rotunda and an adjacent gallery with a rich selection of largely monochrome paintings, works on paper and photographs.

Wool was born in 1955 and grew up in Chicago. By the early 1970s he had settled in New York City, where the anarchic, interdisciplinary energy of the punk and No Wave scenes were a defining influence on his creative development. In the subsequent decade, he set out to explore the possibilities of painting at a time when many considered the medium outmoded and irrelevant to avant-garde practice.

On Wednesday, Jan. 8, at 6:30 p.m. contemporary artist Alex Hubbard will lead a private gallery tour of Christopher Wool, followed by a reception. The fee is $20, $15 for members, $10 for students. For more information, visit guggenheim.org/calendar.

ADDITIONAL IMAGE OF NOTE

Installation view: Christopher Wool, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, through Jan. 22. Photo: Kristopher McKay © Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York.