BASIC LANGUAGE

Tim White's art transmits the impression of a metaphysically transfigured reality. The built up and layered surfaces suggest looking through an unusual type of magnifying glass, sensing another world, a translucent private vision whose insight can be barely perceptible to an outside observer. The paintings seem to be made of microscopically thin overlapping layers of soft glass that form a shockingly bright yet deep surface. The effect is a diffuse light emanating from within and one is tempted to touch this plane which is as smooth as glass yet not cold and impersonal. Filled with dimensionality and light, texture and nuance, the paintings herald an abundance of openings enabling one to enter a different type of sensory experience.

White's art has forged its way into a catalogue of contemporary icons and signs. Its means and techniques can be described as abstract. The paintings have subjects, as one is aware from the titles; the titles serve though only as openings for a universe where the linear succession of seconds condensed without allowing anything but a glimpse in their stratification. The painter's vocabulary of signs is stylistically accurate. The central light is important, yet the elements of darkness interceding upon it serve a different aim in either case. There is an almost metaphorical aspect to the work enabling us toward a mystical reading. His art can only be thought of as a multiplicity of translations, none of which are "real". Thus, the concept of layering proves to be relevant not only for the technique but also for the creative phase.

The referent of such crepuscular and flowing art is far removed from a dictionary definition, because it has too little to do with connoting a familiar inventory of images. We recognize our physical bodies, but Tim White's art shows us that there is something beyond that: relics of a fictive memory, lost in an eternal psychic labyrinth. This map is charted with sequences from the memory's subjective, incomplete and ever-changing code. Pre- and postnatal fragments of images purposefully convey enigmatic phantoms of the internal. The unborn and unfocused visions have not turned into memories yet and are in the nebulous realm between reality and fiction. Even though at a first glance his paintings and prints appear as enigmatic abstractions in a subtle chiaroscuro, with their soft lights playing across surfaces of translucent glazes, there is something more than that: a manipulation of the complementary colors together with the darks and lights, to achieve the desired resonance.

The architecture of White's paintings suggests that he has built his own code; his painterly language mirrors the structure of an urban culture. The work also strongly suggests a sense of wholeness that is perceived and also envisioned through the fragmentary cluster of relevant opposites. This is what gives Tim White's painting their uniqueness. The mind penetrates the intentionality of the form, which becomes subdued only to serve its own purposes. Tim White is an artist capable of leading us on a journey beneath the surface of the invisible forces that constitute the apparent structure of reality. These forces talk by themselves in a basic language, oscillating between the sensation of subjectivity and objectivity and deciphering their message becomes a personal choice.

Dana Bucerzan
Westwood Gallery
March 5, 1999 New York