Whit Forrester

Domesticating the Numinous

As principal actors in nature, plants energize the spaces of my research and work. Here, historical and contemporary aesthetic dimensions intersect with our assumed relationships to the natural world, and to what is known as the Divine or spiritual. At this juncture I primarily employ photographic processes alongside historical techniques of representation to place the work in conversation with art and colonial histories. Gold to represent light, light to represent the Divine, and a portraiture which exists at the edge of still life and iconography. The resulting works are intended to guide our responses as both viewers and participants in the larger world, taking cues from new materialism and the ongoing discourses that conjoin the metaphysical and quantum.

Inside these aesthetic realms’ and metaphysical environment's relationship to power, the natural world as the subject takes on multiple roles. It serves as a historical recipient, an active participant (equal in importance to our human physicality and spirituality), and ultimately a collaborative transformer for the social relationships that compose larger systems of economic and societal power. I am ultimately interested in the potential of houseplants to queer our perceptions of our environments through the capitulation that they are, in fact, living multidimensional prints of the divine themselves.

Whit Forrester is based in Chicago, IL. They attended Oberlin College for undergrad and receive their MFA in Photography from Columbia College. They have exhibited widely, in both national and international contexts, and have a range of aesthetic interests that include: practices of accumulation, manifestations of power, diaspora, noetic science, new materialisms, discourses around the transcendent and the material relationship between self and world.

Images are pigment prints with applied gold leaf, available 10 x 13", 12 x 18” and 13 x 20” made in editions of 5, and 40 x 60" made in an edition of 3. Pieces range in price from $1200 to $3500 depending on size and availability.

Unique pieces range from $3000 to $4750 depending on size.

Please call: (312) 266 - 2350 for prices of specific pieces.
Prices are print only unless otherwise indicated.