Out of Time: A Contemporary View

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Rachel Whitehead. Untitled (Paperbacks). 1997

Rachel Whiteread. Untitled (Paperbacks). 1997

Plaster and steel, Overall 14' 9 1/8" x 15' 9" x 20' 8 3/4" (450 x 480 x 632 cm). Gift of Agnes Gund; Thomas W. Weisel, Patricia Phelps de Cisneros, Frances R. Dittmer, John Kaldor, Emily Rauh Pulitzer, and Leon Black Funds, and an anonymous fund. © 2018 Rachel Whiteread

NARRATOR: The artist, Rachel Whiteread, on creating this room-sized sculpture.

RACHEL WHITEREAD: What I wanted to do was to make an impression of a room that was potentially full of books, but also read as a kind of very simple, minimal, textured surface. What I did was make a series of bookshelves, which I then packed with books, then made a polystyrene interior, sort of mold of the inside of that, and then filled it with plaster.

What you're seeing is a negative space of where the books were. So, if you're looking at your bookcase at home and you think about the space behind the books-- that's what's left. That's what I've actually cast. There's a mixture of new books and second-hand books, some very well thumbed books, some library books. And there' s an awful lot of color in there, it's very subtle color, but there's a lot of color, so it's really about trying to work with the surface.

What I really like about the piece is it's very hard to make your eye settle on one point where you just look at something and, "ooh, I like that bit best, or I like that bit." It just really is a matter of your eye wandering around. There's no one area that you stare at, you're just kind of taken around it.