Rudolf Stingel is an Italian artist from South Tyrol, who has lived and worked in New York since 1987 while maintaining ties to Merano, where he was born in 1956. The textured pattern of these works, commissioned for this exhibition at Palazzo Grassi is appropriated from a Persian carpet. Stingel thus combines the verticality of the picture plane with the horizontality of the carpet. The artist also conflates two opposing visual traditions: the disciplined austerity of monochromatic painting - a durable idiom of avant-garde artists - and the decorative arts. These different sources combine to refute traditional notions of artistic authorship; Stingel's production process eliminates altogether the distinguishing personality of the artist's brushwork, while also satisfying a desire for repetition. Stingel thus encourages the viewer to look beyond these works' luxurious surface to consider the place of authenticity, hierarchy and originality in contemporary art.