CHRISTOPHER WOOL, Guggenheim Promotional GoCARD, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 2013

Offset-printed promotional postcard issued for Christopher Wool's retrospective at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, October 25, 2013–January 22, 2014. The recto reproduces Trouble (1989), enamel and acrylic on aluminium, 182.9 × 121.9 cm — a work that reduces TROUBLE to four consonants: TRBL — printed in black, white and yellow. The verso carries the painting's full credit line, exhibition support credits and, in place of a conventional stamp box, the GoCARD Postcard Advertising imprint.

GoCARD was a commercial free-postcard distribution network: cards formatted to be picked up in bars, cafés and restaurants and carried back into the city. The card belongs to a different circulation system than the museum shop — a visual language that originated partly in signage and street stencilling, passed through painting and the museum, and returned to public space as an advertisement, unchanged in image, changed entirely in placement.

By 2013 Wool required no introduction. Nearly thirty years into his New York career and fifteen years after his first major American survey at MOCA Los Angeles in 1998, the Guggenheim retrospective — around ninety works filling the rotunda and an adjacent gallery — confirmed a position already established rather than announcing a new one.

Design uncredited. The Guggenheim separately records a 2013 exhibition poster as designed by Christopher Wool; this GoCARD carries no printed design credit and should not be attributed to the artist without further evidence.

10.5 × 15 cm. Condition: very good, with light handling and edge wear consistent with distribution. Verso unused.