Studio Paintings: Index (Addendum)
Energy is Eternal Delight at PayneShurvell, London, 17 June-23 July 2011
This limited edition print marks Whittlesea's return to the studio and a continuing engagement with text and typography.
The Studio Paintings (1994-2002) describe the places where artists and writers worked. Whittlesea transcribes the addresses and the migrations of, among others, Mark Rothko, Donald Judd, Piet Mondrian, James Joyce and William Blake. The edition Studio Paintings: Index shows in miniature all the paintings produced from 1994 until 2002. After Circumnavigation, a group of text paintings about Darwin's voyage and his garden walk (2003), Whittlesea retreated from painting and, while continuing to exhibit, stopped making new work. The obsessive attention and discipline that sustained the production of the text paintings was for the next few years directed exclusively toward judo — described sometimes as 'physical chess', sometimes as the 'great crippler' of the martial arts. Despite many and various injuries (broken ankle, nose, ribs etc.), Whittlesea gained his black belt in 2007 and began work on the translation and typesetting of Yves Klein's Fondements du Judo (1954), published in 'transimile' in 2009.
Energy is Eternal Delight brings together several recent works dealing with translation, simulation, title, text and typography, among them a new painting, showing the New York address of Agnes Martin's studio, and an Addendum to the Index, applied to the reverse of the 2002 print.
View the work http://vargas.org.uk/images/press/iw/index_studio.jpg http://vargas.org.uk/images/press/iw/index_gallery.jpg
Published by Vargas Organisation, London, available exclusively from PayneShurvell for the duration the exhibition. Contact: James Payne
Studio Paintings: Index, The Foundations of Judo and other editions by Ian Whittlesea are available from Vargas Organisation, London http://vargas.org.uk/publications/ian_whittlesea
Private view: 16 June 2011, 1800-2000h PayneShurvell: 16 Hewett Street, London EC2A 3NN Gallery hours: Wednesday to Saturday 1100-1800h or by appointment +44 20 0011 4115