-
Austin Martin White
socialclimbing(Staircase), 2023Acrylic medium, pigment, vinyl, 3m reflective fabric208.3 x 182.9 cm
82 x 72 inches -
Austin Martin White's dense and tactile compositions glean from images past to scrutinize the hierarchical structures captured by the Western art historical imagination. In socialclimbing(Staircase), White references the 1793 etching by Scottish painter and caricaturist Isaac Cruikshank titled The Quality Ladder. Cruikshank was known for his social and political satire. His drawings offered a vivid insight into the cultural and political preoccupations of the British during the late 18th century.
In Cruikshank's etching a group of women are attempting to climb the social ladder, depicted as an upward spiraling staircase which White culls in his work with protruding acrylic medium pigmented in a cascading gradient of reds, oranges, and yellows. A recurring theme in Cruikshank's work was the depiction of gluttony and cannibalism used to represent the exploitation enacted upon people by the British monarchy, during a time of intense economic hardship and violent colonial rule. In the title of his painting, White conflates Cruikshank's use of the word quality with social, emphasizing the structural and systemic mechanisms of power and oppression still evident today. By usurping the colonial image the artist redefines its meaning through abstraction — with his idiosyncratic use of color, material, and innovative technical processes.
-
Austin Martin White
exodus, 2023Acrylic medium, pigment, vinyl and 3m reflective fabric208.3 x 182.9 cm
82 x 72 inches -
The work exodus references historical imagery from a New Orleans archive meticulously dissecting ethnographic content's role in perpetuating colonial subjugation and racial biases. Through a distinct and singular artistic process, Austin Martin White undertakes a transformation of these visual fragments, which are deeply rooted in racialized phantasms and narratives of violence. By reclaiming the colonial image the artist redefines its meaning through abstraction — wresting control of representation from the dominion of prejudicial historiography — with his idiosyncratic use of color, and texture which emerges from an innovative technical process of extruded relief painting.
-
-
-
Austin Martin White
after de Mena (casta), 2023Acrylic medium, pigment, spray paint, vinyl, 3m reflective fabric and nylon mesh
208.3 x 182.9 cm
82 x 72 inches -
Austin Martin White
casta frag 1, 2020Jute, 3m reflective fabric, rubber, pigment, graphite, vinyl and screen mesh
91.5 x 76.5 cm
36 x 30.1 inches -
A distinctive series in Austin Martin White’s body of work are his casta paintings. Casta paintings derive from 18th-century Spanish colonialism, which portrayed categories of class and race, specifically interracial family lineages. The system portrayed by the paintings, which typically consisted of separate panels displayed a hierarchy of individuals and peoples in direct linkage to their mixture of their razas. Consequently, it created and displayed a caste system that aimed to secure white superiority while at the same time imposing a social order in which specific ideals and values were assigned to different ethnic groups. White addresses this type of image production adopting the panel structure, yet abstracts their content by blurring the figures, leaving them unrecognizable and almost claiming a right to opacity as Édouard Glissant argued, through diverse layers of materials and expressive color schemes.
-
-
Austin Martin White
Current viewing_room
