Rachel Whiteread's Paris Show: Ghosts and Domestic Molds

Rachel Whiteread returns to Paris after over 15 years with a luminous exhibition at Galerie Nelson-Freeman, showcasing sculptures and works on paper that explore architectural space through casting. The show includes resin and plaster molds of kitchen and bathroom packaging, arranged on white shelves in simple color and form assemblages reminiscent of Morandi or Balthus. These translucent casts evoke not the void they contain but specters of past substances. Also featured are silver metal casts of polystyrene packing debris, which paradoxically serve as wedges. The centerpiece is Ghost, Ghost I, a blue resin cast of a dollhouse belonging to the artist, allowing viewers to see through walls and partitions in a cloudy, ethereal atmosphere. New Postcard Studies series presents postcards of buildings against blue skies, painted with white gouache and perforated with irregular holes, creating dematerialized urban ghosts. The exhibition highlights Whiteread's mastery of sculptural language and her return to intimate, domestic subjects after monumental projects in England and Norway. Meanwhile, a concurrent display of her entire drawn oeuvre at Tate Britain is criticized for a laborious hanging that obscures its lightness and subtlety.