The Seattle Art Museum is currently showcasing the work of the 2021 Betty Bowen Award winning local artist, ANTHONY WHITE with his solo exhibition show Anthony White: Limited Liability on display from August 5, 2022–January 29, 2023. The young artist is known for his vivid pop culture packed paintings that reflect contemporary culture and modern life.
White has created 8 new paintings for this show utilizing his unique technique of using biodegradable plastics in the creation of his works.
More via SAM:
The Seattle Art Museum (SAM) presents Anthony White: Limited Liability (August 5, 2022–January 29, 2023), the solo exhibition of the winner of the 2021 Betty Bowen Award, which honors a Northwest artist for their original, exceptional, and compelling work. Anthony White creates densely packed compositions crammed with products, name-brand logos, and digital icons that mark our increasingly intertwined analog and digital lives.
For Limited Liability, White has created eight new works. These dizzyingly exuberant still lifes and portraits explore why certain consumer objects and ideas are idealized. The artist painstakingly “paints” the surfaces with PLA (a melted biodegradable plastic, primarily used for 3D printing), creating an intriguingly coarse texture that interplays with the seeming sheen of the plastic products he represents. Works such as WAYBACK MACHINE and ’TIL THE END OF TIME trigger a sense of nostalgia for the recent past, as the symbols and objects that once shaped our collective and individual identities—early Super Mario games, flying toaster screensavers, Ask Jeeves, and Napster—are now already obsolete and upgraded with new models.
Limited Liability sees White exploring new formats, including two long rectangular paintings in a more somber key comprising a friend’s portrait and a self-portrait as well as an oversized belt-buckle shape depicting horses both real and symbolic. The smallest painting hangs above them all at the entrance: An Energizer Bunny seen behind a cracked cell phone screen, questioning the relentless pursuits of capitalism.
“White’s plastic material aligns seamlessly with his subject matter,” says Catharina Manchanda, Jon and Mary Shirley Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art. “He seduces you with these brightly colored paintings that speak to the ways in which our identities are being shaped by our material desires and endlessly magnified on social media platforms. You will be dazzled by the artist’s virtuosity and the richness of his images before the great emptiness at the heart of this construct becomes apparent.”
Head to SAM’s YouTube channel to watch a tour of White’s studio in Seattle’s Chinatown-International District. He also talked about his artistic practice in relation to another show currently on view at SAM, Alberto Giacometti: Toward the Ultimate Figure.
Anthony White (b. 1994) is a Seattle-based artist. Recent exhibitions include Queer Visibility: Dean Sameshima & Anthony White at the Henry Art Gallery, Seattle and solo shows at Greg Kucera Gallery, Seattle and PUBLIC Gallery, London. In 2019, White was the recipient of SAM’s Kayla Skinner Special Recognition Award, and in 2020 he won the Neddy at Cornish Painting Award.
ABOUT THE BETTY BOWEN AWARD
Betty Bowen (1918–1977) was a Washington native and enthusiastic supporter of Northwest artists. Her friends established the annual Betty Bowen Award as a celebration of her life and to honor and continue her efforts to provide financial support to the artists of the region. Since 1977, SAM has hosted the yearly grant application process by which the selection committee chooses one artist from the Northwest to receive an unrestricted cash award, eligible to visual artists living and working in Washington, Oregon, and Idaho.
About the Author: Michael Strangeways
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