Michael Whittle solo exhibition
「Different Similarities
Similar Differences」
3.20th Thu. ‐ 5.6th Tue. 2008　closed Wednesday

◎4.26th Sat. 17:00-19:00
artist appearance and discussion

Dim Wisdom

Michael Whittle's art concerning biology records the disjunctive dialogue between mind and nature. It shows how human will to domesticate nature results in peculiarly hampered growth, which then elicits even more tenacious interventions. Drawn with religious solemnity, the back and forth scene commemorates a festival of futility.

The scale of his other work spans from the microscopic to the oceanic, and covers such fields as neurology, anatomy, archaeology, and geography. Gravity and meaning are suspended for our viewing pleasure. At the same time, the sensual pleasure his work provides us is tempered by a certain awareness of the limits to our ever expanding knowledge.

Whittle's visual meditations center on our tools of knowledge, such as nomenclature, classifications, perspectives, the stuff of science. They pay respect to the bounty of gaining knowledge, such as repetitions, symmetry, order. But they also dwell on the margins and aftermaths of our endeavors toward gaining knowledge, where they break down and fail.

In his art, we celebrate world domination along marching knights with flags waving high. We also stand still next to the wise sages with molecular heads. Yet, more often than not, we are left holding the strings and gazing at unmatched lines, unconsummated vanishing points, fallen dust and debris on the ground.

Michael Whittle's often monochromatic, carefully drafted and crafted art is filled with wonderment at the world's resistance against our efforts to understand and change it according to our desires.
What comes through in looking at his art is the curious tension between our hopes and aspirations toward knowledge, with which we can take action, on the one hand, and on the other hand, our despairs and disappointments in our thwarted efforts that eventually lead us to find peace with our dim wisdom.

The stylus is one of the simplest and most economical instruments of scientific practice. Apparently unsophisticated though ubiquitous, it plays a constitutive role in the production of knowledge. In the context of scientific research, both drawing and writing concretize cognitive processes and in this way open up an interaction between perception and reflection, between the securing of phenomena and the formation of theses.

Many objects and phenomena become available and comprehensible only through drawn and written records. Moreover, the activity of writing and drawing constitutes one of the most critical steps in scientific research: the step from (potentially) ambiguous data to stable facts.

In a deviation returning some level of uncertainty, my own process of drawing creates alternative systems of reference, networks of carefully selected images forced in to association with one another which become codes imbued with special hieroglyphic aura.

The works often make allusion both to the human visual system and also to systems of evolution, a poetics of vision and division.

The Central Nervous System has evolved to decipher and reconstruct the sensory World in which it exists and is very much part of, as Wordsworth proclaims, brain builds World, but equally the World has built the brain.

The highly symbolic imagery also relates to the Hermetic visual languages of European Medieval and Renaissance Emblem Books, alchemy and mysticism.
Michael Maier, an important alchemical illustrator, described his work as a mixture of 'Aphrodites and Hermes', as a Hermaphrodite with both a sensual stimulus and intellectual appeal, attempting ' to reach the intellect via the senses'.

Michael Whittle

2005　MA Sculpture Royal College of Art, London
2002　BA Fine Art Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art
1998　BSc Biomedicine Bradford University

Exhibitions
Solo
2008　Man and Eve Gallery / London
Gallery NV / Seoul
Sfera / Kyoto
2007　The louder the Sun Blooms, Daniel Cooney Fine Art / New York
2006　The Topology of Being, Daniel Cooney Fine Art / New York

Selected Group
2007　Story telling, Man and Eve / London
The Search for a Space (Questioning Spaces):
1) Fragments from the Studio / Malta
4) Chroma / Malta
2006　Miniature Worlds, Jerwood Space / London
Adam Humphries / Michael Whittle, Laura Bartlett Gallery / London
Nucleus of Graphics, Le Gun Festival / London
Baroque My World, Transition Gallery / London
Schema, Daniel Cooney Fine Art / New York
Riddles of Form, University of Dundee / Dundee
2005　Art Futures 2005, Bloomberg Space / London
Best of MA-BA, Art Fortnight London / Online Exhibition
Black Body Object, Hockney Gallery, RCA / London
2004　International Students Show, Kyoto City / Kyoto
Group Show, Gasworks Studios / London
Le Gunn Magazine, French institute / London
2002　Invited Work, Royal Glasgow Institute / Glasgow
Earthly Paradise, Cooper Gallery / Dundee

Awards and Scholarships
2004　Kyoto City University of the Arts, Scholarship, RCA
Agency Republic Commission Winner, London
2003　Daler Rowney / Royal College of Art, Drawing Purchase Prize
Agency Republic Commission Winner, London
2002　Farquar Reid Trust Art Prize
Discovery Centenary Art Prize
2001　Erasmus Scholarship, Konstfach Art College, Sweden

Collections
Progressive Art Collection, New York
Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art, New York
Royal College of Art, London
Kyoto University, Japan
Duncan Jordanstone College of Art, Scotland, UK