Daniel Creahan reviews the exhibition Christopher Wool at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, on view through January 22, 2014.

Creahan writes: "Moving from his bold textual works to sharp spray-painted canvases to his photographs, Wool’s perspective on the urban environment becomes more pronounced, and his willing engagement with its symbolism and semiotics is all the stronger for it. In the context of the late 1970′s impulse to “tear it down and start again,” Wool builds his artistic product not from the aesthetic inquiries of his predecessors, but from the immanent iconography of the street, the flux, decay and rebirth of the modern city."