FRESH PAINT
Rudolf Stingel

The Parrish Art Museum and The FLAG Art Foundation continue their FRESH PAINT collaboration with a new work by the artist Rudolf Stingel (American, b. Italy, 1956). At the Parrish, Stingel will present Untitled (2025), a large-scale, interactive installation in the Museum’s Interior Lobby. Untitled is made from a series of Celotex panels—aluminum-faced foam insulation boards—that will cover the entirety of the Lobby’s eastern wall. Its shimmering metallic surface is also malleable and receptive to pressure, inviting visitors to draw into the work’s surface and leave behind marks and impressions of their own designs. Referencing the acts of graffiti and drawing into wet cement, the installation will continue to gather layers of line, text, and image over the course of the presentation, amassing into an extended collaboration between Stingel and the many visitors who come through the Museum’s doors.

Stingel is drawn to Celotex for its ability to hold the trace of human gesture. He first began experimenting with industrial foam in the late 1990s, using Styrofoam panels as a drawing support and as a record of performance, often walking across their surfaces to leave behind impressions of his footprints. In the early 2000s, Stingel shifted from Styrofoam to Celotex and created some of his first immersive installations. For his 2001 exhibition at the Museo d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea in Trento, Italy, Stingel covered an entire gallery with Celotex panels, onto which visitors wrote and drew, producing an evolving counter-relief painting at an architectural scale. From these major installations, Stingel often casts the individual panels, preserving the collaborative exchanges in copper and gold.

Stingel’s Celotex installations have been presented at institutions such as the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY (2006); the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (2007); Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2010); and Fondation Beyeler, Basel/Riehen, Switzerland (2019); among others. FRESH PAINT: Rudolf Stingel marks the first time one of these works will be presented on Long Island.

FRESH PAINT is a rotating series of single-artwork exhibitions at the Parrish that spotlights new or never-before-exhibited works by both emerging and established artists. By circumventing traditional exhibition planning timelines—which can extend years into the future—FRESH PAINT provides a platform for artists to promptly showcase freshly created artworks and ideas, allowing for a more direct response to current issues and cultural movements. This approach fosters a timelier dialogue between the Museum, visitors, and our surrounding community. Presented in the Parrish’s Creativity Lounge located in the Lobby, FRESH PAINT is open to the public at no charge during regular Museum hours.

Each FRESH PAINT installation is accompanied by two sets of interpretative texts: one is a commissioned piece of writing by an invited author, critic, poet, or scholar; the other is a collaboration between members of the Parrish Teen Council ARTscope, a youth-focused educational initiative that offers participants a comprehensive exploration of the visual arts, career pathways, and practical experience in museum operations.

FRESH PAINT: Rudolf Stingel is organized by Scout Hutchinson, The FLAG Art Foundation Associate Curator of Contemporary Art at the Parrish Art Museum, in collaboration with Jon Rider, Director, and Caroline Cassidy, Director of Exhibitions, at FLAG.

Exhibition Support
FRESH PAINT: Rudolf Stingel is made possible, in part, thanks to the generous support of The FLAG Art Foundation.

The Parrish Art Museum’s programs are made possible, in part, by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature, and by the property taxpayers from the Southampton School District and the Tuckahoe Common School District.

About Rudolf Stingel
Born in 1956 in Merano, Italy, Stingel spent his early childhood in the Tyrolean Alps. His early paintings employed tulle and silver spray paint to create abstractions that give the illusion of folded fabric. When he came to New York in 1987, he became increasingly interested in expanding painting beyond the canvas, exploring its properties in sculpture, installation, and architecture. In the early 1990s, the artist cast sections of shag carpet in materials like polyurethane and bronze and displayed them as wall-based works; at the Palazzo Grassi in Venice in 2013, he covered the building’s floors and walls with an Ottoman carpet. “I prefer to create an environment that you can step in to,” explains Stingel, “one that creates a different awareness. An experience that you can carry with you.”

Stingel has exhibited internationally, with major solo shows including those at Fondation Beyeler, Basel (2019); Palazzo Grassi, Venice (2013); Secession, Vienna (2012); LIVE at the Neue National Galerie, Berlin (2010); and an extensive retrospective at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2007). Other significant solo shows include those at the Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt (2004) and the Museo d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Trento, Italy (2001). His work has featured in group shows such as The Writings on the Wall, Hill Art Foundation, New York (2024), Une Seconde D’Eternite, Bourse De Commerce, Paris (2022), Dancing with Myself, Punta della Dogana, Venice (2018); Human Interest, Whitney Museum (2016); NYC: 1993, New Museum, New York (2013); Lifelike, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (2012); Mapping the Studio: Artists from the François Pinault Collection, Palazzo Grassi, Venice (2009); Day for Night: Whitney Biennial 2006, Whitney Museum; and Universal Experience: Art, Life, and the Tourist’s Eye, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (2005, travelled to the Hayward Gallery, London). His work was included in the 2003 and 1999 Venice Biennales. Stingel lives and works in New York.

About The FLAG Art Foundation
The FLAG Art Foundation is a non-collecting, nonprofit exhibition space that mounts solo, two-person, and thematic group exhibitions centering on emerging and established artists from around the globe. Organized by a diverse community of curators and thinkers within and beyond the art world, FLAG opened to the public in 2008 and has staged over 100 exhibitions celebrating the work of nearly 1,000 artists. Committed to providing education and resources for its surrounding community, and across New York City, all exhibitions and programs—including artist talks, artist-led workshops, and guided tours for school and museum groups—are free and open to the public.

The FLAG Art Foundation was founded by Glenn Fuhrman, an art patron and philanthropist, alongside his wife Amanda, a Co-Founder of The Fuhrman Family Foundation. Fuhrman is a Trustee of New York-Presbyterian Hospital, New York, NY; The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; and The Tate Americas Foundation, New York, NY; and is a Board Member of The Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia, PA. He is also a Board Member of the 92nd Street Y, New York, NY, and The Central Park Conservancy, New York, NY.