Lot 217
  • 217

Rachel Whiteread

Estimate
100,000 - 150,000 GBP
bidding is closed

Description

  • Rachel Whiteread
  • WAIT
  • plaster and wood
  • 79 by 39 by 41 cm. 31 1/8 by 15 3/8 by 16 1/8 in.
  • Executed in 2005.

Provenance

Luhring Augustine, New York
Acquired from the above by the present owner

Exhibited

New York, Luhring Augustine Gallery, Rachel Whiteread: Bibliography, 2006
Greensboro, Weatherspoon Art Museum, The Lining of Forgetting, 2008, p. 63, illustrated in colour
Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, Rachel Whiteread, October 2008 - January 2009

Condition

Colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate, although the chair is slightly lighter and the plaster tends slightly more towards yellow in the original, which might be the result of light discolouration. Condition: This work is in very good condition. All surface irregularities to the chair are in keeping with the artist's choice of found materials. There are some losses to the extreme outer edges of the plaster elements, predominantly to the largest element, and a small rub mark to the larger flat box.
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Catalogue Note

“Whiteread invests the shape with much more significance than simply being a structural foundation. In making each box from a real cardboard original, she treats every unit as a linguistic sign capable of poetic evocation, bringing with it a great deal of narrative or personal content, which Minimalism repressed.”

CATHERINE WOOD

Exh. Cat., London, Tate Modern, Embankment, 2005, p. 27

Expressing her interest in the representation of everyday objects through the complexity of their negative appearances, Rachel Whiteread’s WAIT is an exquisite example of the artist’s innovative formal language. Her profound exploration of negative spaces through the investigation of everyday objects, have made her one of the most influential British sculptors working today.

In the present work, six boxes of various sizes are organised around the empty spaces of a chair, simultaneously filling the space yet also representing the void within objects that are no longer present. This intriguing set-up is highly typical of Whiteread’s inventive mode of production, which introduces a conceptual complexity that concomitantly enthrals and confuses the spectator. Through casts of real packages, the artist’s sculptures represent the empty spaces within their original objects, thus placing the viewer in the position of the package itself, looking in from an otherwise physically impossible perspective. The details of the plaster impressions are highly intricate, as they constitute indexical traces of the items’ past presence. The modus operandi of Whiteread’s plaster objects has indeed been compared to that of a three-dimensional photograph, since the sculptures are not only signifiers for the absence of these objects, but also have a physical connection to their former presence.

As the physical ghosts of absent negative spaces, Whiteread’s sculpture breathes new life into their domestic subjects. Indeed, the domesticity of the materials used in WAIT recalls the artist’s most famous project - the large-scale cast of an entire house – and represents her interest in architecture. Through the individual building blocks that constitute the present work, WAIT oscillates between the monumental architectural ambitions of Whiteread’s well-known public sculptures, and a beautifully poetic, minimalist sensibility.