JACK WHITTEN: SPEEDCHASER

Now open in Hauser & Wirth London: “Jack Whitten: Speedchaser”.

October 7 – December 21, 2024

The exhibition includes rare works from Whitten’s landmark, monochromatic Greek Alphabet series (1975-78), which was the focus of a dedicated exhibition at Dia Beacon, New York, from 2022 to 2023.This exhibition in London goes beyond the monochrome to also display Whitten’s experimentation with colour during this process-based period.

On view in the exhibition and exemplary of Whitten’s indirect painting methods are four works from the artist’s renowned Greek Alphabet series. Greece was an important influence throughout the artist’s career. Whitten’s wife, Mary, was Greek and the two first visited the country together in 1969. They would later decide to spend every summer on the island of Crete. Realized between 1975 and 1978, Whitten’s Greek Alphabet series consists of variations of predominantly black and white, abstract compositions ordered per the twenty-four letters of the Greek alphabet.

Featuring repeated parallel vertical and horizontal lines that varyingly intersect, ‘Xzee III’ from this series recalls the complex meander pattern of ancient Greek art, inspired by extended periods of time spent in Crete. The ‘Greek Alphabet’ paintings, including other works such as ‘Nee II’ (1977) and ‘Gamma Group #1’ (1976), are not only technical and material explorations but deeply intimate works that speak to Whitten’s personal connections to Greece as well as his identity as a Black American. While making the series, Whitten studied modern Greek, which had an obvious impact on the work titles, many of which are phonetic spellings of letters in the Greek alphabet.

‘The black + white paintings have forced me to be cooler, imposed a limitation upon my work habit and structure; forced me to tighten the visual concept; provided a personal framework of references plus a stamp of originality: THEY SAY WHITTEN.’ — Jack Whitten, December 1975