Christopher Wool’s Latest Exhibit Finds a Surprisingly Punk Office Building Home

Artist Christopher Wool’s latest exhibit, “See Stop Run,” takes place in a location you wouldn’t expect to be  gritty: The empty 19th floor of 101 Greenwich St., an office building in Lower Manhattan. As visitors step from the elevator into the exhibit, they take in crumbling concrete pillars covered in globs of construction adhesive and spray paint, walls with jagged missing chunks and plenty of bright red exposed wire running along the ceiling. You could be forgiven for wondering: Is it all part of the art? The answer: Kind of. 

Per the show’s website, Wool chose to display his artwork in this particular building, which feels as though it’s in the midst of construction, “in order to escape the presumed neutrality of the ‘white cube’ as an idealized context.”

“I’ve probably done more museum shows than most artists my age. It lost its appeal,” he told Vulture.

The 18,000-square-foot space (which was gutted just before the pandemic, and has been left raw since) houses more than 70 of Wool’s pieces from the past decade, spanning various mediums. Sculptures made of gnarled barbed wire dangle from the ceiling in the airy, sun-flooded space. A series of inky black shapes on paper lines another wall. Keep going and you’ll find a series of black-and-white photographs, a sumptuous cement sculpture sitting atop a pedestal and several pieces made of copper-plated bronze twisted around itself in a whimsical fashion. 

The artwork that visitors on a recent afternoon seemed to linger at the longest is a mosaic piece that takes up an entire wall. The gray background offsets a mass of twining black and pink lines, not unlike the wire sculptures located elsewhere in the gallery. Different shades of pink, from whisper-light rosy pink to a lush coral, are used to create a stunning visual effect. 

Though the artwork takes center stage, visitors to the exhibit should also take a moment to admire the views from this skyscraper. From various points in the gallery, you’ll have picture-perfect vantage points on One World Trade Center, Trinity Church and the Battery. 

See Stop Run is on now through July 31. It’s open to the public between noon and 6 p.m. Thursdays through Sundays and admission is free.