1955, is an American painter and graphic artist. Born in Boston, Massachusetts, to a microbiology professor and a psychiatrist, he grew up in Chicago, a city he frequently identifies as his birthplace. He moved to New York in the 1980s, becoming associated with a group of artists in SoHo that included Jeff Koons, Haim Steinbach, and Robert Gober. He lives and works in New York.

His early paintings from the mid-1980s employed commercial paint rollers traditionally used to create decorative wallpaper patterns. From 1988 onward, he gained recognition for his large-scale word paintings, consisting of black letters, fragmented phrases, and quotations applied to white-painted aluminium panels. He used painting, spray paint, and stencil techniques to produce works featuring phrases such as Riot, Run Dog Run, and Sell the House, Sell the Car, Sell the Kids.

His later work increasingly incorporated abstract linear forms applied with spray guns and partially erased using solvent-soaked cloths. Through repeated application and removal of paint, he developed multilayered compositions in which lines, marks, and wiped surfaces interact. His practice encompasses painting and graphic techniques, with an emphasis on the relationship between image, surface, and reproduction.

His work has been presented internationally, including at the Whitney Biennial in 1989 and documenta IX in Kassel in 1992. Major exhibitions have taken place at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles (1998), the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York (2013), and the Art Institute of Chicago (2014). In 2009 he received the Wolfgang Hahn Prize in Cologne. In 2018 he designed an entire edition of the German newspaper Die Welt.

Reference
Biography text from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA), German edition. Retrieved 7 November 2026.
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Wool