Quantum Wall: An Interview with Jack Whitten

Yevgeniya Traps | The Paris Review | 1st March 2017

Jack Whitten comes across as obsessed with materials, constantly trying out pigments, new papers, specialty waxes and chemicals. Paint is not applied with a brush but cured slowly in slabs, cut into tiles and assembled as a kind of collage. The effect he is seeking is a marriage of contemporary and timeless: “Everything I do is grounded in geometry … [tiles are] like working with stone—it becomes a primal element.”