ART CITIES: London-Rachel Whiteread

Rachel Whiteread’s practice occupies a distinctive position within contemporary sculpture, where absence becomes as materially potent as presence. In her works, the overlooked spaces of everyday life—beneath furniture, inside rooms, within architectural fragments—are rendered tangible through casting, transforming the invisible into something enduring. The exhibition “Substitute” by Rachel Whiteread encapsulates this conceptual and material investigation, presenting new sculptures alongside recent photographs that extend her long-standing dialogue between memory, materiality, and form.

By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Gagosian Archive

At the core of Whiteread’s approach lies a paradox: she solidifies what is typically void. Through casting techniques, objects such as beds, tables, and architectural structures are stripped of their utility and reconstituted as “ghosts” of their former selves. These replicas retain the imprint of lived experience—scratches, wear, subtle irregularities—while suggesting a suspended temporality. In the exhibition “Substitute”, this strategy is articulated through a compelling interplay of materials and processes, where one medium consistently stands in for, or echoes, another.

A central body of work in the exhibition consists of large-scale wall-mounted reliefs created by pressing papier-mâché pulp onto weathered barn doors and gate fragments. The resulting surfaces, subsequently finished in pigmented silver and copper leaf, carry both the tactile memory of their source materials and the visual authority of metal. This transformation underscores Whiteread’s interest in substitution—not only as a technical procedure but as a conceptual framework. The fragile, recycled nature of papier-mâché contrasts with the illusion of permanence suggested by metallic finishes, producing a tension between ephemerality and durability.

In contrast to these opaque works, Whiteread presents translucent resin casts of sash windows in soft blue and pink tones. These pieces foreground light and permeability, emphasizing the threshold between interior and exterior space. While the metallic reliefs evoke solidity and weight, the resin windows introduce a sense of fragility and openness, expanding the exhibition’s material vocabulary while maintaining its thematic coherence.

Whiteread’s use of industrial materials such as concrete, resin, and rubber—alongside traditional media like plaster and bronze—has long aligned her with the legacy of Minimalism. Yet, unlike the austere neutrality often associated with that movement, her work is deeply affective. The surfaces she casts are not abstract planes but repositories of lived experience, marked by time, use, and human presence. In this sense, her sculptures function as mnemonic devices, evoking absence, loss, and the persistence of memory.

The inclusion of papier-mâché is particularly significant. Historically associated with preliminary models or amateur craft, the material carries connotations of both transience and reuse. For Whiteread, it also represents a personal continuity, linking her early transition from painting to sculpture with her current practice. In Substitute, papier-mâché becomes a mediator between past and present, as well as between two- and three-dimensional forms.

Complementing these works are a series of small-scale fiberglass sculptures, a relatively new material in Whiteread’s oeuvre. These pieces originate from objects collected during “mudlarking” excursions—searches along riverbanks and shorelines for discarded or lost items. Painted in bright, almost playful colors, the sculptures evoke seaside leisure while simultaneously referencing the accumulation of debris and the passage of time. Their clustered arrangement recalls earlier works such as Untitled (6 Spaces), in which Whiteread cast the negative spaces beneath chairs, again foregrounding absence as a sculptural subject.

The exhibition’s photographic component extends these concerns into a different medium. Whiteread’s photographs document incidental encounters—subtle alignments, overlooked textures, quiet moments of disuse. Their restrained palette and understated compositions resonate with her sculptural language, capturing both positive forms and the spaces around them. These images suggest a world marked by quiet abandonment, where traces of human activity linger without direct presence.

Taken together, the works in “Substitute”  invite sustained contemplation of the relationship between natural and constructed environments, and between object and memory. Whiteread’s practice reveals how deeply our surroundings are imprinted with human experience, even in their most mundane forms. By transforming absence into substance, she not only redefines the boundaries of sculpture but also offers a poignant meditation on the persistence of the past within the fabric of everyday life.

Photo: Rachel Whiteread, Installation view of multiple works from Rachel Whiteread’s ‘Untitled (Canister)’ series (2024–), © Rachel Whiteread, Photo: Prudence Cuming Associates Ltd, Courtesy Gagosian

Info: Gagosian, 17–19 Davies Street, London, United Kingdom, Duration: 26/3-10/5/2026, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-18:00, https://gagosian.com/