prior moments in the painting process, allowing accidents and outtakes to become part of the sequence. In their composite character—previously brought together in quadrants that echoed the evidentiary axis of an x-ray and so highlighted the glitch and remove of the print process—the silkscreens now provide a surprising amount of depth and resolve, encouraging the eye to rest and quell before jumping back to the nervy present of the canvases. And while much has been made of Wool’s reliance on silkscreen as a kind of Warholian maneuver informed by the “Pictures” discussion of appropriation that immediately preceded Wool’s arrival upon the New York art scene, it is equally important to note that Wool’s technique is one of quoting himself—and so references a different inflection from Warhol’s repertoire—and of quoting paintings that continually risk an ongoing, fraught relationship with how gesture, performance, and

immediate environs can still relate to painting as a medium. Distinct from some who claim Wool’s influence, the decoding employment of silkscreen and other print procedures unleashes a series of decisive moves that will become formative in Wool’s serial approach.

The perpetual present of Wool’s paintings may be attenuated, striated, and highly edited but it refuses retrospective terms for the medium as it continues to unsettle the relation between active and residual spaces. Far from merely mapping the route or process taken in a composition, Wool makes room for voids and clearings to repeatedly occur and cancel each other within and across his paintings; not unlike the walker recuperating form from a rented universe of emptied out places, Wool continues to liberate spaces for temporary occupation even as he places more and more obstacles in his way.

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