Rachel Whiteread — One Hundred Spaces
Rachel Whiteread is a sculpture artist and she usually uses cast for her creation. She is the first female artist who won the Turner Prize in 1993. Her most well-known work is ‘House’ which created in 1993, it is a large concrete casting that restored a large Victorian residential house, which is a topic that people still talking now.
‘One Hundred Spaces’ is the series that interested me. This piece of work is formed by 100 polyester resin cubes cast from the voids under 100 different chairs. She broke the tradition, create tangible objects from unseen spaces. Rachel also brought those areas out of context, not only showing the spaces under the chair, but also enlarge and display it in a very creative way. This 100 pieces of sculpture work has presented the invisible space, the space that people overlooked in the daily life.
The square room chosen by the museum to house the piece mirrors the castings’ square grid. By seeing those 100 pieces of cubes arranged in a square space in a neat order, I feel peace and seems like everything in that environment become still. If we look close to the cubes, we can see that they are not perfect; edges are slightly uneven and it has revealed the irregular surfaces of the used chairs from which they were cast. It shows the unique and differences of the individual chair. There are lots of things and moments we missed every day and her works remind me again we need to observe more in our daily life.
Reference
Collage of the Arts. (2017). Untitled (One Hundred Spaces) (1997).Available: http://art-tech.arts.ufl.edu/~kecipes/whiteread/Hundred.html. Last accessed 7th March 2017.
Collage of the Arts (2017) Untitled (One Hundred Spaces) (1997). [Photograph] Retrieved from: http://art-tech.arts.ufl.edu/~kecipes/whiteread/Hundred.html
Singular Forms (2017) Untitled (One Hundred Spaces), 1995. Resin, 100 units; overall dimensions variable. Courtesy Anthony d’Offay Gallery, London. [Photograph] Retrieved from: http://pastexhibitions.guggenheim.org/singular_forms/highlights_15a.html
Wroe, N. (2013). Rachel Whiteread: a life in art. Available: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2013/apr/06/rachel-whiteread-life-in-art. Last accessed 4th March 2017.
