Fredrik Wretman
Covered by droit de suite
Image rights
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"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.