Seattle-based artist Whiting Tennis finds inspiration in the timeworn, provisional structures that populate the rural Northwest. From a paint-splattered blue tarp to a pieced-together shed, Tennis’s art celebrates the everyday materials and eccentric forms of often-overlooked objects and revels in the mystery and layers of usage embedded within them.
Drawing grounds Tennis’s practice, providing a starting point for his idiosyncratic forms that often combine paint with woodblock prints cut to reference the surface texture of plywood, tree bark, or shingles. His work also incorporates repurposed materials, such as discarded wood, cardboard, concrete, plaster, paint, asphalt, and tar, embraced for their individual particularities and histories.
While slick design and technological invention are praised in consumer culture, Tennis’s contemplative and tender view of the disregarded suggests an alternative way of considering the world around us.
Opener 22 is the first solo museum show for Whiting Tennis, and includes sculpture, painting, drawing, and collage from the past twelve years. The exhibition will also mark the debut of several new paintings and outdoor sculpture.