Kylie White

Moskowitz Bayse is pleased to present Gone to Earth, an exhibition of watercolors and sculpture by artist Kylie White. The occasion marks the artist’s third solo presentation at the gallery, and will be installed in our Viewing Room from May 6 – June 17, 2023. We will host an opening reception on Saturday, May 6 from 6-8pm.

In considering the permutability of observable and recordable form, Kylie White’s watercolors concretize the lush and angular landscape of Scotland’s Isle of Skye, ultimately revealing it as a collection of sculptural source signals in a constantly developing geology. Absolute in their mass and severity, the geological features of Skye, as presented by White, become meditations on time and the essential translatability of sculpture: for something to exist in three dimensions, it must be legible in two. Formed by millennia of volcanic and sedimentary deposits, glaciation, and frequent landslides, the landscape is sculpted. Executed in thin washes of color plainly applied, White’s observations are tender in their frankness. There are no frills, nor unnecessary information; like her sculpture, White’s watercolor practice achieves density through economy, efficiency, and clarity. 

White’s square images document her yearly returns to Skye, where she hikes and paints, seeing the same faithful landforms without the interruption of trees and buildings so endemic to most scenic places. Constantly considering the concept of deep time, White’s works aim to capture the living, changing quality of the sweeping terrain widely considered the birthplace of modern geology. Far from inactive, the mountains crash into one another over millennia, sink into the earth, and slowly give way to wind, air, and civilization with the artist serving as a momentary chronicler. 

The varied perspectives across works affirm this, emphasizing the powerful directional qualities of the enormous landmasses. In Quiraing, White situates herself some distance from the base of the mountain, looking up at its grassy, reaching foothills, which become supporting pedestals for rising crags. In Cleat, the artist gazes down at the form, which appears impossibly heavy as it slides and succumbs to gravity. The sky, too, always seems in precise step with the earth below it. Different densities and behaviors are clear but, the artist distinguishes terra firma from vaulted atmosphere through structure and surface with in the same careful manner.

White’s watercolors advance a flattened mode of seeing, in which all things, to the eye, are made of the same material, infinitely rearranged. This consistency, a corollary to the coded systems that define White’s sculptural practice, further relates the natural world to sculpture through the rejection of circumvention. Signifiers embed themselves in this format, and in the consistency of White’s hand and eye. As the barrier of medium is stripped away, White’s watercolors become records of sight and presence, temporary entreaties to the endless potential of form.