Today, we go #InDetail with James White’s Mosquitoes 2, 2019, a striking example of the artist’s signature approach to painting.
James began his career as part of a collaborative duo exhibiting large-scale works in the early 1990s, but turned from installation, choosing instead to pursue a singular painting practice characterized by a palette restricted completely to black and white and the multitudinous shades of grey found in between.
This painting is based on a photograph taken in the early hours during “a nightly attack of mosquitoes” last summer, whilst on vacation with his family and friends in Puglia. Stripped of their color, the focus of each painting is on the immaculate detail rendered by the artist’s hand. This commitment to representational painting imbues his work with a fundamental permanence, underscoring the continuity in moments of silence, doubt and repose that have been the subject of art for centuries.
Through his depiction of familiar objects, White shifts the attention from what is presented to the elusive. Implying a narrative arc, the isolated moments he depicts create a psychological space for suspense and reflection on the actions that lie outside the frame. At the same time, his meticulous rendering of quotidian objects reminds us of the beauty to be found in the everyday.
James White, Mosquitoes 2, 2019, oil and varnish on, birch ply panel in Perspex box frame, 30 11/16 x 40 15/16 inches (78 x 104 cm) #NYCGalleriesLive @jameswhitestudio #SeanKellyNY #DigitalProgramming #indetailwednesdays