| Description |
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. |