The retrospective organized by the Madre Museum of Naples is the first exhibition of Rachel Whiteread to be held in an Italian museum.
For this occasion the artist has created a big installation that she has especially conceived for the premises of the Neapolitan museum. She used dozens of doll’s houses from different epochs to give form to an imaginary village, reminiscent of the historical reconstructions that are found in the museums of archaeological sites, analyzing and deconstructing our critical perception of the housing contexts.
Rachel Whiteread (London 1963) is one of the leading artists of her generation. Since 1988, when she graduated at the Slade School of Fine Art, Whiteread has used casts of ordinary domestic objects for her sculptures: the spaces below chairs and beds and inside the closets, bathtubs and inside of houses is filled so that what is void becomes solid and what is negative becomes positive. The object that surrounded the empty space seems to be absorbed by the space itself, leaving traces of its presence in the cast.
Through the description of the absence, the artist manages to produce sensorial associations also by making use of materials such as polyurethane, resins, plaster and rubber, which increase the perception of something that no longer exists but was once indissolubly connected with human life.