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Rachel Whiteread
Transient Spaces
October, 27 - January 13, 2002
Deutsche Guggenheim is pleased to present the exhibition Rachel Whiteread: Transient Spaces, featuring commissioned work by the British artist. For her project for the museum, Whiteread has created two new large-scale sculptures: Untitled (Apartment) and Untitled (Basement).
Since the late 1980s, Whiteread has created a unique body of work consisting predominantly of sculptures cast from discarded household items and abandoned architectural spaces. Composed of such industrial materials as plaster, concrete, rubber, and polyester resins, Whiteread's impressions of beds, sinks, chairs, and wardrobes echo 1960s Minimalism. Yet unlike the latter movement, the artist's work explores domestic themes, providing intimate experiences, conjuring up various private memories and associations, and often evoking the feeling of absence and loss. Whiteread's larger architectural projects allow for broader social reflection. For House (1993), Whiteread cast in concrete the entire interior space of a late-Victorian, working-class home, located on a street scheduled for demolition. After its outer walls were removed, the exposed concrete work stood as a monument to the vanished neighborhood, drawing attention to the consequences of gentrification in London's East End at the time. A more recent project, Holocaust Memorial, unveiled in Vienna's Judenplatz in October 2000, commemorates the Austrian Jews killed during the Holocaust.
For her project for Deutsche Guggenheim, Whiteread is examining the themes of public and private as related to the rebuilding of Europe after World War II. Looking for a new home and studio, the artist recently purchased a building that was destroyed during the war and reconstructed by 1957. Created out of exigency, the geometric and austere structure was rendered in a style devoid of flourish. Throughout its fragmented history, the building has assumed various identities, serving first as a synagogue, later a plywood furniture factory, and soon the artist's new residence and work space. Whiteread's two casts, taken from an upstairs apartment and a basement staircase, will reveal a generic, neutral structure-a space of transience-where the realms of public and private, as well as the spiritual, industrial, and domestic, blur boundaries, reflecting the aesthetic concerns and economic necessities of the postwar period.
As part of a stylistically diverse group of artists loosely referred to as the Young British Artists, Whiteread began to receive international attention in the early 1990s. Among her contemporaries, Whiteread has distinguished herself for creating an imaginative body of artwork that evokes a quiet, contemplative spirit, receiving such critical acclaim as the Tate Gallery's prestigious Turner Prize in 1993 and a medal at the 1997 Venice Biennale. Most recently, in the summer of 2001, Whiteread's work was the subject of a retrospective at the Serpentine Gallery, London, and a new public sculpture, Monument, was unveiled in Trafalgar Square.
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Previous commissions for Deutsche Guggenheim have included paintings by James Rosenquist and Jeff Koons, installations by Andreas Slominski and Lawrence Weiner, and photographs by Hiroshi Sugimoto. Rachel Whiteread's project, which marks the sixth commission for Deutsche Guggenheim, is the first to focus on sculpture.
The exhibition has been curated by Lisa Dennison with Craig Houser, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. The accompanying catalogue is available in English or German at a price of € 30,17/ DM 59 and includes essays by Lisa Dennison, Molly Nesbit, and Beatriz Colomina; as well as a work of fiction by A. M. Homes and an interview with Rachel Whiteread by Craig Houser.
In tandem with the exhibition, Rachel Whiteread has also created a limited-edition sculpture Doorknob, which serves as edition No. 17 for Deutsche Guggenheim. Limited to 300, the multiple is sold exclusively at the MuseumsShop for the price of € 180/ DM 352,05.
Entitled Places of Memory, guided tours to the memorials in Berlin Mitte will take place on November 10 and 20 and December 1 and 11, 2001, from 2 to 4 p.m. Sites include Peter Eisenman's planned Holocaust memorial at Brandenburg Gate, Micha Ullman's memorial to the Nazi book burnings erected in Bebelplatz in 1995, followed by the exhibition Rachel Whiteread: Transient Spaces at the Deutsche Guggenheim. The tour has been organized in cooperation with art:berlin.
On Friday, November 23, 2001, at 7 p.m., Andrea Schlieker will present the lecture Memory and Silence: On the Iconography of Rachel Whiteread's Sculptures. The London-based, free-lance curator has followed Whiteread's work for many years and is the acknowledged expert on her career.
Deutsche Guggenheim invites both adults and children to visit the Familiy Brunch on Sunday, December 9, 2001, at 11.30 a.m.
The final event in the supplementary program is the Finissage on Sunday, January 13, 2002, at 5 p.m. Barbara Schnitzler of the Deutsche Theater Berlin will read two pieces of fiction related to Rachel Whiteread's work by the American author A. M. Homes.
Deutsche Guggenheim is a partner of .kunstherbst Berlin
Images of the exhibition
are available online at www.photo-files.de/guggenheim in a 300 dpi quality.
Further information at
Manager: Svenja Gräfin von Reichenbach
Press: Sara Bernshausen
Phone: +49-30-202093-14
Fax: +49-30-202093-20
email: berlin.guggenheim@db.com
Internet: www.deutsche-guggenheim.de
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