Upper East Side, New York
James White
House Plant Paintings
RodderRodder is pleased to present James White House Plant Paintings, the artist’s debut exhibition with the gallery and the first exhibition in New York for the artist since 2016. This exhibition brings together eleven paintings from the artist’s newest House Plant (H.P.) series. Known for exploring the potential of painting to recast everyday objects in quietly strange and charged scenes, James White (b. 1967, Tiverton, UK) turns to the motif of the house plant as a metaphor for observation and complicity. Through paintings that invite stillness and scrutinization, James White attempts to bring contrast to the unabated tumult of visual content in the modern age. To White, the simple house plant is a silent witness to the rhythms of shared lives and dramas of habituation. In these works, the slow growth and dependable presence of the plant is painted against the environs of volatile, transforming narratives. Working exclusively in black and white, White further destabilizes the boundary between documentation and invention. Without color, surface, reflection, and tone come to the forefront. The deep shadows and withheld familiarity heighten the psychological and cinematic dimension of the work. At the same time, the palette evokes the clarity of forensic imagery. What may seem to be a transcription of the real becomes something more elusive; the image contorts, rather than confirms, experience. The material elements of White’s work escalate their psychological charge. White does not paint on canvas or linen, but instead on aluminium panels, honeycomb board, or plywood. The House Plant (H.P.) paintings are on aluminum, a perfectly flat, stable surface that allows for luminous detail while echoing the cool detachment of photographic imagery. The paintings are encased in a Perspex box, a material which both protects and reflects the images. Functioning as a kind of shop window, the work becomes an object of display and simultaneously incorporates the viewer’s reflection into the image. This reflective encounter is central to the artist’s practice: it turns the act of looking into a negotiation between interior and exterior, subject and spectator. James White (b. 1967 Tiverton, UK) lives and works in London, United Kingdom. He received his BA from the Wimbledon School of Art in 1989 and his MA from the Royal College of Art in 1991. White’s recent exhibitions include ‘Every Corner Abandoned Too Soon,’ Anthony Wilkinson Gallery, London, UK (2025); ‘Shades of Grey,’ Skarstedt, London, UK (2024); ‘Means To An End,’ Zander Galerie Paris, Paris, France (2024); ‘I’ll See You When I See You’, Fondation Fernet- Branca, St. Louis, France (2022); ‘Not this Time,’ Galerie Greta Meert, Brussels, Belgium (2021); ‘New Paintings,’ Galerie Thomas Zander, Cologne, Germany (2021). White has been featured in exhibitions at international institutions including ‘Composition for the Left Hand,’ Kode Museum, Bergen, Norway (2024); ‘PaintingPhotography,’ H2 – Zentrum für Gegenwartskunst im Glaspalast, Augsburg, Germany (2023); ‘Fragile! Alles aus Glas.’ Grenzbereiche des Skulpturalen, Kunstmuseum Ahlen, Ahlen, Germany (2022); and ‘Deceptive Images—Playing with Painting and Photography,’ Marta Herford, Museum for Art, Architecture and Design, Herford, Germany (2020).