Wendy White

heart beats dust

May 17 - July 3, 2024

Gaa Gallery New York

Gaa Gallery is pleased to present heart beats dust, Wendy White’s second solo exhibition with the gallery and her first in the Tribeca space. This exhibition marks an exciting direction and will feature all new paintings on clear vinyl alongside White’s latest resin and steel sculptures. Drawing on themes of infinity, loss, and longing, the work in the exhibition continues the artist’s signature combination of contemporary branding, American pop culture, and twentieth-century art history.

heart beats dust draws its title from Jean Dupuy’s 1968 work by the same name, from the exhibition The Machine as Seen at the End of the Mechanical Age at The Museum of Modern Art. The piece, composed of dust activated by acoustic vibrations stimulated by viewers’ heartbeats, was made visible by a beam of light from above. Inspired by this delicate balance of the tangible and intangible, White draws on personal experience, giving form to feelings that might be indescribable otherwise.

Circular paintings in custom frames hint at celestial and planetary motifs. Painted in alkyd on clear stretched vinyl, they are hazy and atmospheric, hovering in states of suspension. Their stretchers are visible as are the walls behind. Pixelated hearts and reconfigured surf and car culture logos serve as anchor points, pointing to ideas of customization, modification, and time-based accumulation by way of sticker collecting subcultures.

Tangled sculptures made from steel and black epoxy resin rest atop a massive gridded pedestal. One standing, one kneeling, they seem to be beginning work on something, or perhaps they are stuck in an effort to make sense of their existence. Centrally installed in the exhibition, this sculptural narrative alludes to the vanishing grid of early computer games and 80s graphic design, placing White’s anthropomorphic characters in a quasi-nostalgic time and space. On their gridded, neon yellow threshold, there are no ends—just endless lines, broken connections, futile parts, and infinite circles.

In the large-scale, multiple-part painting Endless Sans, a confluence of logos forms a disjointed, subliminal narrative. Endless, a Japanese brake manufacturer, and SANS, a manipulated version of the American skateboard apparel company Vans, together signify unending ennui. In Dirt Shirts, now-defunct 80s branding vibrates against the Formula 1 logo, reminiscent of a used universe of artistic vocabulary in which all is in a state of erosion except for ever-present brand names. Appearing throughout the exhibition is a pixelated heart, a motif central to White’s work. Low-res and sometimes broken, they are markers of time, life, and loss.

Wendy White (b. 1971, Deep River, CT) is based in New York City. Her work has been featured in solo exhibitions at Galerie Lange + Pult, Zürich; Gaa Gallery, Provincetown, MA; Kaikai Kiki, Tokyo; Leo Koenig Inc., New York; Shulamit Nazarian, Los Angeles; COUNTY, Palm Beach; Maruani Noirhomme, Brussels; VAN HORN, Düsseldorf; Denny Dimin Gallery, New York; David Castillo, Miami; Eric Firestone Gallery, New York; Andrew Rafacz Gallery, Chicago; Galerie Jérôme Pauchant, Paris; Sherrick & Paul, Nashville; and Galeria Moriarty, Madrid.

White’s work was the subject of a solo museum exhibition in 2021 entitled Low Pressure at Museum Goch, Germany. She was recently included in Resistance Training: Arts, Sports, and Civil Rights at the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum in East Lansing, MI. Institutional group exhibitions include The World’s Game: Fútbol and Contemporary Art at Perez Art Museum in Miami, FL; Fútbol: The Beautiful Game at LACMA in Los Angeles, CA; Full of Peril and Weirdness at M Woods in Beijing, China; and American Idyll at SCAD Museum of Art in Savannah, GA.