Artwork
My House I
My House I is a print by Christopher Wool. It dates from 2000 and is held in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum.
About this work
Overview
The print was produced by Counter Editions and belongs to a broader portfolio of contemporary works.
My House I is a screenprint by Christopher Wool, created in 2000 as part of a series of three works reinterpreting an earlier text-based painting from the 1980s. The print was produced by Counter Editions and belongs to a broader portfolio of contemporary works. Wool’s process involves multiple layers of reproduction: the original painting was photographed, xeroxed, and chemically re-separated to generate the printing plates, embedding mechanical reproduction into the work’s very structure.
Subject & Meaning
The print features the phrase 'if you don’t like it you can get the fuck out of my house,' borrowed from Wool’s earlier paintings. The language, drawn from vernacular sources, is stripped of context and rendered as visual texture. Its repetition and distortion evoke the aggressive tone of public signage and the erosion of meaning through mass reproduction, questioning how language functions within consumer and artistic culture.
Technique & Style
Wool blurs the line between handcrafted and mechanical execution. The text appears stenciled and weathered, resembling graffiti or degraded film titles, yet it was produced through screenprinting. What seems like a spontaneous brushstroke may be a precise ink transfer, and vice versa. This ambiguity challenges assumptions about authorship and originality, reflecting Wool’s interest in the tension between gesture and reproduction.
History & Provenance
The print derives from a 1980s painting that Wool later reworked through photographic and photomechanical processes. The 2000 screenprint was published as part of a limited portfolio by Counter Editions, which featured fourteen contemporary artists. The work’s lineage—from painting to photograph to xerox to print—highlights Wool’s ongoing engagement with the lifecycle of images and the instability of artistic origin.
Context
Wool’s work emerges from a post-punk, post-conceptual milieu where painting’s relevance was actively debated. By appropriating the visual language of advertising and street culture, he interrogates the authority of the painted surface. His use of text aligns with broader 1980s and 1990s practices that treated language as both subject and material, resisting traditional notions of abstraction and expression.
Legacy
My House I exemplifies Wool’s influence on contemporary art’s engagement with reproduction, language, and the dematerialization of the hand. The work’s layered genesis and deliberate ambiguity have become touchstones for artists exploring the boundaries between originality and replication. Its presence in institutional collections underscores its role in redefining painting’s possibilities in the age of mechanical reproduction.
Artist & collection
