Rachel Whiteread

The Artist
Gagosian Gallery
Private Collection

Colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate. Condition: This work is in very good condition. Some very faint discolouration visible to some of the plaster elements has occurred over time, and is in keeping with the artist's choice of medium.
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Expressing her interest in the representation of everyday objects through the complexity of their negative appearances, Rachel Whiteread’s Cabinet VII is an exquisite example of the artist’s innovative formal language. Her profound exploration of negative spaces, here beautifully captured within the more conventional enclosure of a cabinet, has made Whiteread one of the highest regarded sculptors of our time.

In the present work, thirty-nine impressions of cardboard boxes are presented within the post-minimal austerity of a white cabinet. Whilst the work is stunningly elegant in its appearance, Whiteread’s inventive mode of production introduces a conceptual complexity that concomitantly enthrals and confuses the spectator. Through casts of real packages, Whiteread’s sculptures represent the empty spaces within their original objects, thus placing the viewer in the position of the package itself, looking in from an otherwise physically impossible perspective. The details of the plaster impressions are highly intricate, as they constitute indexical traces of the items’ past presence. The modus operandi of Whiteread’s plaster objects has indeed been compared to that of a three-dimensional photograph, since the sculptures are not only signifiers for the absence of these objects, but also have a physical connection to their former presence.

As the physical ghosts of absent negative spaces, Whiteread’s cabinet sculptures breathe new life into their intimate subjects. Cabinet VII has the domestic sensibility of the restrained palette of Giorgio Morandi, but also brings up the artist’s interest in architecture. Through the individual building blocks that fill the cabinet, the work oscillates between the monumental architectural ambitions of Whiteread’s well-known public sculptures, and a beautifully poetic, minimalist sensibility.