Ian Whittlesea
Ian Whittlesea’s work is concerned with words, and with the ability of text to transform the physical and psychic state of the viewer. It often uses the lives and works of other artists as source material and assumes many forms: from painstaking text paintings to printed books, ephemeral posters and transient projections. He first became known for his ongoing series of Studio Paintings that, using white paint on a dark ground, simply name the place that another artist or writer has worked. His translation of Yves Klein’s Les fondements du Judo was published in 2009 and his newly illustrated edition of Mazdaznan Health & Breath Culture in 2012. These texts, along with his recent work Becoming Invisible, have been collectively described as ‘instruction manuals for transcendental exercise’. From the Studio Paintings to his brief recreation of Klein’s Judo Académie de Paris at Tate Modern, Whittlesea has consistently engaged with the legacy of conceptual art, taking text into the expanded field.
Whittlesea has shown at a number of national and international institutions including Marlborough Contemporary, London, Tate Modern, London, Artists Space, New York, Florence Loewy, Paris, Contemporary Art Society, London, The Narrows, Melbourne, Australia and the Drawing Biennial, Drawing Room, …
Ian Whittlesea’s work is concerned with words, and with the ability of text to transform the physical and psychic state of the viewer. It often uses the lives and works of other artists as source material and assumes many forms: from painstaking text paintings to printed books, ephemeral posters and transient projections. He first became known for his ongoing series of Studio Paintings that, using white paint on a dark ground, simply name the place that another artist or writer has worked. His translation of Yves Klein’s Les fondements du Judo was published in 2009 and his newly illustrated edition of Mazdaznan Health & Breath Culture in 2012. These texts, along with his recent work Becoming Invisible, have been collectively described as ‘instruction manuals for transcendental exercise’. From the Studio Paintings to his brief recreation of Klein’s Judo Académie de Paris at Tate Modern, Whittlesea has consistently engaged with the legacy of conceptual art, taking text into the expanded field.
Whittlesea has shown at a number of national and international institutions including Marlborough Contemporary, London, Tate Modern, London, Artists Space, New York, Florence Loewy, Paris, Contemporary Art Society, London, The Narrows, Melbourne, Australia and the Drawing Biennial, Drawing Room, London.
Courtesy of Marlborough Contemporary