Jack Whitten

Presence II

Jack Whitten
Presence II
1994
Sumi ink on rice paper
56.5 x 48.6 cm / 22 1/4 x 19 1/8 in

Drawing was an integral part of Jack Whitten’s artistic and technical maturation throughout the different phases of his evolution as an artist. Working on paper fundamentally served as means of research, both of ideas and the multidimensionality of vision. As he would later describe in 2014, ‘Drawing is the skeleton of what I do in painting.’ (1)

With an emphasis on formal innovation, Whitten not only constructed new artistic implements, he additionally transformed the original essence of traditional mediums. In his studio notes, Whitten identified the expressive brushwork mastered by early Chinese, Japanese, and Korean artists as highly influential to his use of Sumi ink and rice paper. The challenge and subsequent blessing of this medium is that there is no such thing as erasure; once the ink hits the paper, there is no turning back. One can see the beauty of Sumi ink’s capacities in Whitten’s ‘Presence’ series, made during the 1990s.

This body of work, characterized by their evidently serendipitous marks, is representative of Whitten’s fascination and commitment to materiality. For the ‘Presence’ drawings, he created his own tool, binding twenty or more boar hairs together, which were tough, coarse, and difficult to work with. Rather than utilizing a tool of one point, he used a tool of multiple points on a two-dimensional plane, which allowed him to investigate the architectonic structure of multiple dimensions, conceptualizing space itself as multi-dimensional. By making marks all across the rice paper, what resulted were apparition-like forms that appear as ephemeral entities.

1.) Jack Whitten, Studio Log, November 2014.