Untitled

To create Untitled (2009), the artist moulded a fragment of one of his works, in which the public was invited to freely leave its traces on a malleable mural material. The more the writing covered the work, the more it disappeared. As a final gesture, the artist took this scarred skin and moulded it into a solid material, thus conjuring its fate.

These imprints and traces, known in ancient Greek as acheiropoietes (cheir meaning “hand” and poietes, “creator”), once referred to images that were miraculous in origin. Made by Stingel and this collective of participating viewers, these gestures are shrouded in mystery. Such testimonies to the passage of time become new objects of devotion, like votive offerings, fragile in their suspension between absence and presence.

This gilded panel epitomises Stingel’s ongoing exploration of the way we live and understand a work of art in the postmodern era. By inviting the viewer to participate actively in the creative act, Stingel subverts the traditional hierarchies of painting. He removes himself from the process almost entirely and exalts the public’s work by preserving every mark in a precious material. In so doing, he suggests that their gestures as a whole are equal to those of the artist/individual genius, thereby directly questioning the Romantic notion of the importance of the pictorial gesture.

The Pinault Collection showed this work for the first at the Icones exhibition at Punta della Dogana in Venice in 2023