About
A lot of the works that I’ve been making over the years have been part of a cyclical process. Things have happened, things branch off, things crop up that I haven’t thought about. I often feel a cycle is incomplete and need to tread the same path again. I’ve been teaching myself a language for the past fifteen years, and the utilization of that language can take on many forms.
—Rachel Whiteread
Gagosian is pleased to present drawings and a new sculpture by Rachel Whiteread.
This is the latest in a new series of sculptures for outdoor spaces in which Whiteread has substituted robust materials such as stone and concrete for the more fragile plaster, rubber, and resin of many of her best-known works. It comprises five approximately cubic forms of varying size and surface texture, arranged in a straight line. Small linear cutouts disrupt the otherwise smooth surface of each cube. Given that the work is intended for an outdoor space, changing light and shadow becomes another implicit and highly subjective dimension in the work. Two such commissions have been completed to date—in Stockholm, Sweden, and Dallas, Texas—and in subsequent works Whiteread is continuing to develop and refine her forms and use of media.
Using various materials to articulate the negative space surrounding or contained by objects, Whiteread has elaborated various approaches to casting and impression as subject, process, and vehicle for content. Her daily 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.
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Rachel Whiteread: … And the Animals Were Sold
An installation by Rachel Whiteread in the Palazzo della Ragione, Bergamo, Italy, commissioned by Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Bergamo and cocurated by Lorenzo Giusti and Sara Fumagalli, opened in June of 2023 and ran into the fall. Conceived in relation to the city, the architecture of the site, and the history of the region, it comprised sixty sculptures made with local types of stone. Fumagalli writes on the exhibition and architect Luca Cipelletti speaks with Whiteread.
Now available
Gagosian Quarterly Winter 2022
The Winter 2022 issue of Gagosian Quarterly is now available, featuring Anna Weyant’s Two Eileens (2022) on its cover.
Rachel Whiteread: Shy Sculpture
On the occasion of the unveiling of her latest Shy Sculpture, in Kunisaki, Japan, Rachel Whiteread joined curator and art historian Fumio Nanjo for a conversation about this ongoing series.They address the origins of these sculptures and the details of each project.
Augurs of Spring
As spring approaches in the Northern Hemisphere, Sydney Stutterheim reflects on the iconography and symbolism of the season in art both past and present.
In Conversation
Tom Eccles and Kiki Smith on Rachel Whiteread
On the occasion of Artist Spotlight: Rachel Whiteread, curator Tom Eccles and artist Kiki Smith speak about the work of Rachel Whiteread through the lens of their personal friendships with her. They discuss her public projects from the early 1990s to the present, the relationship between drawing and sculpture in her practice, and the way her works reveal the memories embedded in familiar everyday objects.
In Conversation
Rachel Whiteread and Ann Gallagher
Rachel Whiteread speaks to Ann Gallagher about a new group of resin sculptures for an exhibition at Gagosian in London. They discuss the works’ emphasis on surface texture, light, and reflection.
News
Artist Spotlight
Rachel Whiteread
October 21–27, 2020
In Rachel Whiteread’s sculptures and drawings, everyday settings, objects, and surfaces are transformed into ghostly replicas that are eerily familiar. Through casting, she frees her subject matter—from beds, tables, and boxes to water towers and entire houses—from practical use, suggesting a new permanence, imbued with memory.
Photo: Anita Corbin, from the series First Women UK