Stanley Whitney. This is his first exhibition with the Gagosian gallery and his first major exhibition in Rome, where he lived for five years in the 90s. The exhibition presents works produced in Italy and in the United States.
Whitney's vibrant abstract paintings unlock the linear structure of the grid, imbuing it with new and unexpected cadences of colour, rhythm and space. Drawing inspiration from sources as diverse as Piet Mondrian, free jazz, and African American quilt making, Whitney composes with blocks and bars that articulate a chromatic call-and-response in each canvas. Whitney has spent decades experimenting with the seemingly limitless potential of a single compositional device, which freely divides square canvases into multiple registers. The thin oil paint keeps its brushwork active and allows for a degree of transparency and tension at the edges between each vivid rectilinear parcel. In various sizes of canvas, she explores the shifting effects of her freehand geometries on both an intimate and large scale as she deftly lays down successive blocks of paint, listening to the call of each colour.
Although Whitney was deeply invested in chromatic experimentation throughout his career, he solidified his distinctive approach during a formative trip to Italy in 1992, shifting his compositions from unbound amorphous forms to the denser arrangements that characterize his mature style.
It was Roman art and architecture – including the imposing facades of the Colosseum and Palazzo Farnese and the stacked shelves of funerary urns on display in the Museo Nazionale Etrusco – that informed Whitney's nuanced understanding of the relationship between color and geometry.
Italy remains a central element and enduring source of inspiration for Whitney, who spends her summers painting in her studio near Parma. He works steadily and prolifically, continually exploring the possibilities of tonality in his now signature painting. While in Italy, Whitney adapted his palette to the history around him, allowing muted colors, rounded beiges and browns, and Pompeii reds to take a uniquely prominent place in his rich and varied compositions. These warm tones appear in full force in Bertacca 2 (2019), one of three large canvases included in this exhibition that Whitney produced in Italy. Here, he recreates the shade of vermilion featured in the Boscoreale trompe l'oeil frescoes at the Naples National Archaeological Museum. He transposes this jewel tone onto his canvas in dense swathes and lozenges of paint, directly juxtaposing it with the cardinal red he developed in the United States. Whitney's contrasting hues create a dynamic interplay of space and mass, bringing the rhythms of the classical past into conversation with the active present.
Stanley Whitney was born in 1946 in Philadelphia and lives and works in New York and Parma, Italy. Collections include the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Philadelphia Museum of Art; Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY; High Museum of Art, Atlanta; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; and Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO. Solo exhibitions include recent works, AAM Architettura Arte Moderna, Rome (2004); Omi International Arts Center, Ghent, NY (2012); Dance the Orange, Studio Museum in Harlem, New York (2015); and FOCUS, Museum of Modern Art of Fort Worth, TX (2017). Whitney attended Documenta 14 (Athens, Greece and Kassel, Germany) in 2017.
On the occasion of the exhibition, the series of Auteur conversations at the MAXXI National Museum of XXI Century Arts will host Stanley Whitney, Wednesday 1 April, at 18.00.
Cover Image:Stanley Whitney, That's Rome, 2019 – Oil on linen, 96 × 96 inches (243.8 × 243.8 cm)
©Stanley Whitney. Photo: Rob McKeever
