Zeno X Gallery is honored to present a third solo show by the Afro-American abstract painter Jack Whitten (°1939, Bessemer, Alabama). The work of Jack Whitten is currently being celebrated by a retrospective, ‘Jack Whitten: Five Decades of Painting’, which opened at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego in September 2014, travels to the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus in May 2015, and onwards to the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis in September 2015.

For Zeno X, he has made a new body of paintings in which he continues to push the material possibilities of acrylic paint as applied to abstract painting.  The so-called ‘death of painting’ has been alluded to over and over in recent history, yet Whitten categorically rejects that absurd assessment. These paintings remind us of pre-modernist historical references in their allusion to ancient mosaics. They also allude to concepts of space, time and its relationship to modern technology. Whitten’s worldview, based on his interest in quantum physics, cosmology, fractal geometry, topology, bio-engineering, mathematics, biology, chemistry, and psychology, provides the conceptual underpinnings of his paintings. Jazz music, philosophy and the collective memory of identity are a complex balancing act in his construction of a non-figurative abstract narrative. Whitten insists that his works are not an illustration of an idea. His titles are specific for each painting and provide a hook in our understanding of their meaning. He is a process-oriented artist who cultivates controlled gesture compressed through the materiality of paint. Whitten claims that the painting is the reproduction of a concept.

In 1964 he wrote on his studio wall “The image is photographic; therefore, I must photograph my thoughts.” In 1970 Jack Whitten abandoned figurative abstraction, and the brush, to distance himself from abstract expressionist painters such as Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline and Jackson Pollock. The studio became a laboratory. He constructed a large 3,5 by 6 meter drawing board on the studio floor, absolutely level and square to prevent any arbitrary movement of paint. The verb ‘to paint’ was replaced by the verb ‘to make’. He made a big tool, which he called ‘the developer’. With the developer, the picture plane was reduced to one gesture. This profound innovation is what allowed him to bypass the abstract expressionist masters: he had completed his first objective. Navigating through the 50 years of painting, distinct periods can be distinguished based on formal and technical evolutions. The ‘Slab paintings’, ‘Cut Acrylic’, and ‘Greek Alphabet Series’ mark the historical works dating from the seventies. In 1974 Jack Whitten was one of four artists in residence at the Xerox Corporation who were selected to experiment with their equipment and interact with their technicians. This experience was very influential to his studio practice. It was the Xerox experimentations that opened his mind to the possibility of paint as matter.

Whitten has always insisted that all art is about perception, but his interest in perception is its application to abstraction painting in particular. In October 2005 he explained the relation between abstraction and perception as the following: 

“Abstraction is a particular tool of perception, akin to a microscope. Because of its present historical location in time and space, as evident within the history of painting, abstraction has slowly but surely plunged painters into the molecular dimensions of inner space. When abstract painters advanced beyond the dependence on nature’s abundant resources of symbolic references, they were forced internally into mind as matter. Mind as matter is uncharted territory: there are no maps, and new tools must be invented.”

In the 1980s, Whitten’s historical two-dimensional plane evolved into a concrete three-dimensional plane.  His use of sculptural techniques involved the use of plaster of Paris molds from found objects cast in acrylic paint.  This allowed the paint to operate without support. Therefore, the acrylic paint had become a medium of collage; this allowed him to address the problem of subject matter in abstraction. Jazz musicians, poets, family members, important members of the African-American community, honored as Black Monoliths are the subject of many paintings. For his current show, Alexander Grothendieck, a German-born French mathematician who played an important role in the development of modern algebraic geometry is the subject of Escalation II (x² + y² = 1) For Alexander Grothendieck; Leonard Nimoy know as ‘Dr. Spock’ on Star Trek is the subject of Vulcan Philosophy (“Infinite diversity in infinite combinations”) For: Dr. Spock.

In 1990 Whitten discovered that his acrylic skins that were used as collage could be cut into tesserae. Tesserae are the units in ancient mosaics. They also function as pixels, which are the units in contemporary electronic communication. Due to the complexity of process he divides it into three distinct processes: Construction, Deconstruction, Reconstruction. Construction is the building of the acrylic skin. Deconstruction is the literal cutting or breaking of the unit after freezing the skin. Reconstruction is the final making of the painting. In response to hand surgery in 2012, the tesserae disappeared into a unified wave surface with a three-dimensional line embedded in the wet acrylic surface, these are known as the Loop paintings. The current Escalation series continues the use of tesserae, but with a more explosive, organic energy. They reflect his interest in the molecular patterns found in particle physics. Cosmologically speaking, Whitten’s position is that the universe is both expanding and shrinking simultaneously.

Jack Whitten’s works are currently included in group shows at: Foundation De 11 Lijnen, Oudenburg; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles. Upcoming group shows will be at The Menil Collection, Houston; Kunstmuseum Stuttgart. For ‘Atopolis’, a group show in Mons curated by Dirk Snauwaert, Whitten has created a monumental piece that will be on view from 13 June until 18 October 2015. His work has been exhibited in the 1969 and 1972 Whitney Annuals at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; and a landmark 1974 solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Recently, Whitten’s work has been featured at the Brooklyn Museum (2014); Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens, Deurle (2014), 55th Venice Biennale (2013); among others. His work is represented in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Tate Modern, London; Whitney Museum of Art, New York; Birmingham Museum of Art; Brooklyn Museum, New York; Aldrich Museum, Ridgefield; Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland; Columbia University, New York; Fogg Art Museum of Art, New York; High Museum of Art Atlanta, Atlanta; Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, San Diego; Newark Mseum; Newark; Palm Springs museum, Palm Springs; Princeton Art Museum, Princeton; Rose Art Museum, Waltham/Boston; SFMOMA, San Francisco; Studio Museum of Harlem, New York; Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, New York; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis and Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas among others.