Curator, Alexandra Schwartz: Rachel Whiteread is a British artist born in 1963 and she first came to prominence as one of the YBAs, the Young British Artists who made a huge splash in the '90s. And she's best known for her large-scale sculpture, which are casts, often in plaster, of interiors of domestic rooms, the undersides of furniture.
She's had a long time fascination with lace patterns. So to make these, she worked with a master printmaker, but instead of then making prints on paper, these are the printing plates themselves. And whereas with etching, you etch the plate with acid, and then make a print from that plate, she used jets of acid to etch clear through the plate.
And this you could say is also a form of negative space, because she is taking away the metal to create this very lace-y, beautiful pattern with the plate.