James White Biography

James White began his career as part of a collaborative duo exhibiting large-scale works in the early 1990s, coming to the public’s attention at the same time as his fellow YBAs. After parting ways with his artistic partner in 2001, White turned from installation to painting, dedicating himself to producing the finely wrought, luminous black and white oil paintings for which he is well-known. White’s commitment to an apparent tradition of representational painting imbues his work with a fundamental permanence, underscoring the continuity in moments of silence, doubt and repose that have been the subject of art for centuries, whilst profoundly updating its implications. Painted on aluminum, wood or plastic, his work has its origin in snapshot photographs taken of his environment both domestically and when travelling—a door that is slightly ajar, a glass of water left on a bathroom sink, a broom leaning against a wall. The objects in the paintings imply a narrative arc that, similar to a cutaway shot in film, creates a psychological space for reflection on actions that lie outside the frame. White’s masterfully rendered moments of everyday life bear comparison to the quietude of paintings by the Flemish masters and Lucian Freud’s early interiors, whilst the distilled forms that inhabit them reflect a more contemporary, ritualized, minimalist sensibility.