Rachel Whiteread
06 Nov - 20 Dec 2008
© Rachel Whiteread
Juggle II, 2008
Plaster, pigment, and bronze
9 3/4 x 21 1/4 x 17 1/2 inches (24.5 x 54 x 44.5 cm)
Juggle II, 2008
Plaster, pigment, and bronze
9 3/4 x 21 1/4 x 17 1/2 inches (24.5 x 54 x 44.5 cm)
RACHEL WHITEREAD
November 6 - December 20, 2008
Opening reception for the artist: Thursday, November 6th, from 6 to 8 pm
"Color confuses me. Every day when I get up, I have to think about it. I love color, but there are too many decisions to make. Am I an aesthete? Is color about necessity for me in my work— Or is it simply a product of what I am thinking about?
I try not to dwell on it; if I did, I would only ever use black and white."
--Rachel Whiteread
Gagosian Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition of new sculpture by Rachel Whiteread. This will be the artist's first solo exhibition in Los Angeles.
For the past two decades, Whiteread has developed various approaches to casting and impression as both a process and vehicle for content. Her practice is based on a persistent duality: a pragmatic approach to the materials and making of art coupled with a fascination for the psychologically charged associations and traces of human contact borne by and embedded in objects and environments. By casting the empty and unexamined spaces inside and around the domestic objects and materials that populate daily life, she renders negative space as positive sculptural form to poignant and unprecedented effect.
In recent years, Whiteread has moved away from the monolithic, architectural, and site-specific sculptures for which she became so renowned, such as Ghost (1990), House (1993) and Basement (2001), returning to a more intimate scale to explore the mutable nature of mass-produced vessels and materials. Her ensembles of cast packaging in delicately modulated hues of white, ranged on tables and shelves or leaned casually against the wall, have prompted comparison with the work of Italian painter Giorgio Morandi, whose simple and repetitive motifs -- bottles, jars, and vases -- and restrained use of color, value, and compositional balance made him a prescient and important forerunner of Minimalism.
In the current work, Whiteread has passed beyond her characteristically muted and spectral palette, exploring the conventions of still life in a more relaxed and exuberant mood. Casting all manner of small packing boxes, containers and discarded materials in vividly pigmented plaster and jelly-hued resin -- acid greens, watery blues, deep amber, rose, tangerine, and saffron -- she has assembled animated groupings of the resulting objects on wall-mounted shelves or set them casually on low bronze plinths and tubular steel chair frames. Immortalized vestiges of today's avid consumer culture, these tableaux are Whiteread's wry, sometimes inverse reflections on the role of color in art and life.
Rachel Whiteread was born in London in 1963. Her work has been exhibited internationally in many solo and group exhibitions including the British Pavilion at the 47th Venice Biennale (1997), the Serpentine Gallery, London (2001), Deutsche Guggenheim, Berlin (2001), the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (2002), Kunsthaus Bregenz, Austria (2005), and MADRE, Naples (2007). She has also produced notable temporary public commissions such as House (London, 1993), Water Tower (New York, 1998), Monument (London, 2001), and Embankment at Tate Modern, 2005. In 1996 she received the controversial commission for Holocaust Memorial at the Judenplatz in Vienna, which she completed in 2000. An exhibition of her recent work Place (Village) (2006-2008) is currently on view at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Whiteread lives and works in London.
November 6 - December 20, 2008
Opening reception for the artist: Thursday, November 6th, from 6 to 8 pm
"Color confuses me. Every day when I get up, I have to think about it. I love color, but there are too many decisions to make. Am I an aesthete? Is color about necessity for me in my work— Or is it simply a product of what I am thinking about?
I try not to dwell on it; if I did, I would only ever use black and white."
--Rachel Whiteread
Gagosian Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition of new sculpture by Rachel Whiteread. This will be the artist's first solo exhibition in Los Angeles.
For the past two decades, Whiteread has developed various approaches to casting and impression as both a process and vehicle for content. Her practice is based on a persistent duality: a pragmatic approach to the materials and making of art coupled with a fascination for the psychologically charged associations and traces of human contact borne by and embedded in objects and environments. By casting the empty and unexamined spaces inside and around the domestic objects and materials that populate daily life, she renders negative space as positive sculptural form to poignant and unprecedented effect.
In recent years, Whiteread has moved away from the monolithic, architectural, and site-specific sculptures for which she became so renowned, such as Ghost (1990), House (1993) and Basement (2001), returning to a more intimate scale to explore the mutable nature of mass-produced vessels and materials. Her ensembles of cast packaging in delicately modulated hues of white, ranged on tables and shelves or leaned casually against the wall, have prompted comparison with the work of Italian painter Giorgio Morandi, whose simple and repetitive motifs -- bottles, jars, and vases -- and restrained use of color, value, and compositional balance made him a prescient and important forerunner of Minimalism.
In the current work, Whiteread has passed beyond her characteristically muted and spectral palette, exploring the conventions of still life in a more relaxed and exuberant mood. Casting all manner of small packing boxes, containers and discarded materials in vividly pigmented plaster and jelly-hued resin -- acid greens, watery blues, deep amber, rose, tangerine, and saffron -- she has assembled animated groupings of the resulting objects on wall-mounted shelves or set them casually on low bronze plinths and tubular steel chair frames. Immortalized vestiges of today's avid consumer culture, these tableaux are Whiteread's wry, sometimes inverse reflections on the role of color in art and life.
Rachel Whiteread was born in London in 1963. Her work has been exhibited internationally in many solo and group exhibitions including the British Pavilion at the 47th Venice Biennale (1997), the Serpentine Gallery, London (2001), Deutsche Guggenheim, Berlin (2001), the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (2002), Kunsthaus Bregenz, Austria (2005), and MADRE, Naples (2007). She has also produced notable temporary public commissions such as House (London, 1993), Water Tower (New York, 1998), Monument (London, 2001), and Embankment at Tate Modern, 2005. In 1996 she received the controversial commission for Holocaust Memorial at the Judenplatz in Vienna, which she completed in 2000. An exhibition of her recent work Place (Village) (2006-2008) is currently on view at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Whiteread lives and works in London.