Gotta admit, 2025 was that kind of year, and I lost track of Christopher Wool’s See Stop Run exhibition, which I’d assumed ended in a tasty book. Turns out it up and moved to Marfa, the artist’s own [other] home. It’s installed for two whole years in two large gallery spaces, right in town, on Highland Avenue.
Mary Etherington’s review for Glasstire is a useful compare & contrast. One big specific difference may be due to ceiling height. Wool’s first foray into mosiac is shown in 16.5 x 11-ft portrait mode in Texas, while it was shown in 11×16.5 landscape in New York. Considering the 4x larger mosaic Wool made for Hudson Yards is also horizontal, the change doesn’t feel like a corrective as much as a variation.
The bigger difference is one Etherington works around to: the change in context. At first it seems obvious that means the difference between NYC’s sprawling, gutted skyscraper floor, and the adapted storefront white cubes in Marfa. And that compact blankness certainly intensifies the works’ relationships with each other vs the space.
Instead/also, it is Marfa and West Texas itself that makes the difference. I lol’d when Etherington literally called out Wool—again, a fairly longtime Marfa resident—for Marfa sculptural appropriation:
Pretty much everyone in Marfa has a collection of found wire. A visitor to Marfa picked up some cheese at the store and a little wire on the street, then posted it on social media. In New York, the smaller gauge wire sculptures felt out of place, too familiar. My dismissiveness was born of what felt like appropriation of the essence of Marfa. Don’t @ me.
What makes it click, though, is Wool’s installation of gigantized, wire-inspired sculptures in three scattered sites around town. So he’s not just taking from the Marfa found wire culture; he’s also giving back.
Disruption of Time & Place in the Classroom [glasstire]
See Stop Run still running [seestoprun]
Previously, related: Adam & Eve & Charles & Christopher