Rachel Whiteread is one of the preeminent sculptors of her generation. Her practice is defined by an ongoing investigation of domestic architecture and the traces of humanity impressed upon such sites. She casts the spaces inside and around objects – be they bathtubs or mattresses, architectural elements such as doors, floors and windows, or even entire buildings – and uses materials such as resin, rubber, concrete, and plaster to preserve each surface detail. The resulting sculptures are remarkably faithful to their source molds, but also uncannily foreign in that they represent an inverse of the original object and require a constant reorientation of perception. Absence is made present, interior becomes exterior, and the invisible is rendered visible.

Whiteread is best known for several large-scale public commissions such as House, a sculpture cast from the interior of a condemned Victorian house in London’s East End; Water Tower, a resin cast of the water towers ubiquitous to the New York City skyline; Monument, an inverted pedestal placed upon an empty plinth in Trafalgar Square; and the Holocaust Memorial in Vienna, an impenetrable library of books turned inwards in commemoration of the thousands of Austrian Jews who perished during World War II. These monumental works are distinguished by their poetic minimalism and their capacity to evoke stillness and contemplation. Her most recent commissions include The Tree of Life, a frieze for the historic façade of the Whitechapel Gallery in London in 2012, and Cabin, a permanent public sculpture for Governors Island, New York in 2016.