Thursday, 14 March 2024, 5-8 pm

Zander Galerie is delighted to present for the first time in Paris, new work by London based artist James White, born in 1967.

Created specifically for the Paris gallery, White’s new paintings reflect upon notions of presence and absence, permanence, and impermanence. Entitled Means to an End, the artist invites us to move slowly through time towards an inevitable conclusion. In these new small paintings, we encounter the serial presentation of a singular motif: the drinking glass, which in each work becomes a surrogate, the metaphorical protagonist in isolation.

White evokes encounters and events which take place just before, after, or outside the frame using photographs taken in his immediate environment, at home, in bars, hotel rooms or familiar interiors. In his characteristic black-and-white paintings, intimate everyday scenes and objects become the focal point and in their airless vitrine-like boxes, these numb images oscillate between the concrete and the intangible simultaneously. Above all, White seeks to create narrative fragments imbued with ambiguity and suspense, in which empty spaces evoke a past action, a life lived. In this sense, it appears that the psychological dimension takes precedence over the aesthetic. 

White reminds us of the human condition. We come into the world alone and we exit the world alone. Beneath their apparent banality, his works invite deeper reflection on the very nature of the objects that surround us, and with which we will live until the end.