Vienna. Rachel Whiteread and the value of memory

For the first time in Austria, the Belvedere 21 presents a comprehensive retrospective of the renowned British artist Rachel Whiteread’s work. Considered one of the leading international artists of her generation – she was the first woman to win the prestigious Turner Prize in 1993 and went on to represent the UK at the 1997 Venice Biennale –, with her sculptures Whiteread (b. 1963, London) has been making voids visible and materializing the intangible for over three decades. 

Curated by Harald Krejci, the exhibition features some seventy pieces spanning from Whiteread’s early casts of hot water bottles, furniture, and architectural elements to her latest reliefs made from papier mâché. Other important centerpieces of the show are “Closet” and “Mantle” (both from 1988), “Untitled (Twenty-Five Spaces)” from 1995, and “Untitled (Room 101)”, a cast of the room 101 in the BBC’s former Broadcasting House, assumed as the model for the torture chamber “Room 101” from George Orwell’s dystopian novel “1984.”

Made of industrial materials such as plaster, concrete, resin, rubber, metal, and paper, her famous casts of empty spaces range in scale from the monumental to the intimate. They are characterized by a minimalist language and severity, but show a strong poetic quality and forceful presence, evoking personal and universal human experiences and memories.

Her holocaust memorial on Judenplatz (2000), a concrete tribute to the Austrian Jewish victims of nazism with an uncomfortable unapologetic presence, undoubtedly defined her further development as an artist and left a lasting mark on Vienna, transforming the discourse surrounding remembrance.
Opening image: installation view at Belvedere, Vienna, 2018. Photo Johannes Stoll.