"Leo Castelli", 1990
Signed Fredrik Wretman and dated 90 verso. Unique. Cibachrome, image 119 x 210.5. Including original iron-frame, 123 x 215.
Provenance
Purchased directly from the artist by the then-owner in connection with the exhibition "A Museum Fill Out (American Floors)," 1991.
Bukowski Auktioner, Vårens Contemporary & Design 585, 12 May 2015, lot. 271.
Private Collection, Sweden.
Exhibitions
Borås Konstmuseum, Sweden, "A Museum Fill Out (American Floors), 1991.
Literature
Jan Åman, "Fredrik Wretman / American Floors", 1991, illustrated.
More information
Fredrik Wretman's work "Leo Castelli" is one of twenty photographs that formed part of "American Floors", an installation and legendary exhibition that was shown at Moderna Museet, Stockholm, in 1991. The photographs in the series depicted floors from American galleries and art institutions, including the legendary Leo Castelli Gallery where artists such as Jackson Pollock, Robert Rauschenberg, and Andy Warhol exhibited.
The photographs in "American Floors, Russian Slippers", which were shown at the Moderna Museet, were displayed in iron frames placed on the floors. Parts of the exhibition spaces were filled with water mirrors installed in shallow basins, creating a kind of illusion or doubling of the exhibition space. While philosophy has approached reflection with skepticism as deceptive, its semblance has been embraced by artists and writers. The illusion, filtering, and the mediated, distancing appropriation of reality are central to Wretman's work.
The photographs' status as artworks naturally leads to art historical associations: Warhol's repetitive seriality or when we get close to the enlargements and notice their dots, reminding us of the painting of the last turn of the century.
The series "American Floors" was created during Wretman's time as a PS 1 fellow in New York in the late 1980s. In the works, Wretman explores the significance of context for meaning-making and the artwork as a bearer of content.
More about Fredrik Wretman
Wretman, Fredrik b. 1953 in Stockholm. Swedish sculptor and photographer. Educated at Gerleborgsskolan 1972-1975, ABF's art school 1975-1976, Royal Institute of Art 1980-1985, where he has also been a teacher, as well as at Konstfack. He is one of Sweden's most established artists with a multitude of public art commissions behind him. Early on, he utilised the video camera to find new expressions and representations. In the project "Goatrans" at Färgfabriken, he performed himself in 32 orange-coloured editions "as Buddha" alongside water projections from the Pacific Ocean, the Amazon, and the Trondheim Fjord. For more than twenty years, he has worked with water installations, often in large formats where he reshapes the surroundings into infinity. Reflections and mirror images on water surfaces evoke surprising illusions and ambiguities. Fredrik Wretman has a remarkable ability to find new paths within art.
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Image rights
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