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May 14, 2004 Immediate Release Press Contact: Karen Gysin 612.375.7651 [email protected] ART UNDERFOOT: RUDOLF STINGEL CARPETS THE WALKER’S LOBBY CONCOURSE AND OUTDOOR ENTRANCE PLAZA INSTALLATION IS HALF OF A DIPTYCH; OTHER HALF TO BE ON VIEW IN NEW YORK CITY’S GRAND CENTRAL TERMINAL Over the past 15 years, Italian artist Rudolf Stingel has often installed vibrantly hued carpets as artworks, transforming an American standard into a radical, seductive, and somewhat disorienting form of painting. For his first major public project in the U.S., Stingel has designed an enormous carpet painting—27,000 square feet of wall-to-wall pink and blue floral carpet–for two landmark sites: Grand Central Terminal’s Vanderbilt Hall and the Walker Art Center. This summer, from June 11–August 8, the lobby concourse and outdoor entrance plaza of the Walker Art Center and Guthrie Theater will be carpeted in a field of blue flowers on pink grass. Plan B combines an off-the-shelf commercial carpet pattern that might seem at home at a Las Vegas hotel and reproduces it in an intense palette. Playing with notions of taste, public space, and interior design, Stingel creates a garden that flows from the outdoors to the indoors, in which flowers never die under our trampling feet. At nearly 7,500 square feet, Plan B Detail of Rudolf Stingel’s Plan B Courtesy Art Production Fund, New York envelops the viewer in an aesthetic and (more) Rudolf Stingel’s Plan B, page 2 conceptual reality that expands contemporary painting practice to include popular motifs, yet finds affinities with art historical references ranging from medieval tapestries to Mark Rothko's color-field paintings and Carl Andre's floor sculptures. This monumental, dynamic, optimistic “painting” is one half of a diptych. The other part will be on view in the Vanderbilt Hall at Grand Central Terminal in New York City from July 1–29. The Walker lobby area is open daily from 10 am–8 pm or until the conclusion of the Guthrie Theater’s evening performances. Rudolf Stingel was born in 1956 in Merano, Italy. His work has been exhibited in prominent exhibitions both nationally and internationally, most recently at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, in the exhibition Singular Forms, and in a solo exhibition at the Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt. His work has also been included in the 2003 Venice Biennale and in the exhibition Painting at the Edge of the World at the Walker Art Center in 2001; at the Rooseum Center for Contemporary Art, Malmö, Sweden; and at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. In 2001, his work was the subject of a mid-career retrospective at the Museo di Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Trento, Italy. Plan B is produced by Art Production Fund (APF), a nonprofit organization devoted to helping artists realize difficult-to-produce works, reaching new audiences, and expanding public participation and understanding of contemporary art. APF was cofounded in 2000 by Yvonne Force Villareal (president) and Doreen Remen (director). This project is made possible with generous support from Maurice Kanbar, Alcoa Foundation, and Yves Saint Laurent. APF is grateful for the support of: The Deerfield Foundation, Isabella Del Frate, Jill Hubbard, Donald R. Keough, Louis Marx, Jr., Laurance S. Rockefeller, Donna and Ben Rosen, Rachel Rudin, Victorinox-Swiss Army Knife Foundation, Tom Ford, and Lisa Schiek in addition to Durkan Carpets, Pandiscio Co., and Paula Cooper Gallery. Walker without Walls is made possible by generous support from Target. Walker information/box office: 612.375.7622. The Walker Art Center is located at 725 Vineland Place, at Lyndale Avenue South, Minneapolis, one block off Highway I-94. For public information, call 612.375.7622. http://www.walkerart.org No. 48.

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