In Conversation: Matilde Guidelli-Guidi, Glenn Ligon and Zoé Whitley on Jack Whitten

Join us for a conversation with Matilde Guidelli-Guidi, Glenn Ligon and Zoé Whitley in celebration of the exhibition ‘Jack Whitten. Speedchaser,’ at Hauser & Wirth London.

• 9.30 am: Exhibition preview and complimentary refreshments
• 10 am: Talk begins
• 11 am: Talk ends

Tickets are free, however advance booking is essential and late arrivals will not be admitted. Please note that seats will be allocated on a first come, first serve basis.

About Matilde Guidelli-Guidi
Matilde Guidelli-Guidi is a curator and Curatorial Department Head at Dia Art Foundation, which has locations in Germany and the US, including New York, New Mexico, South Carolina and Utah.

In 2022 – 2023, she presented with Donna De Salvo, the first-ever exhibition and publication devoted to Jack Whitten’s Greek Alphabet painting series (1975 – 1978). Her upcoming projects include exhibitions of work by Cameron Rowland, Kishio Suga and Duane Linklater; discursive commissions to Paul Pfeiffer, Alan Michelson and Martine Syms; and a primary-source book of Senga’s Nengudi’s drawings, writings and performances for the camera.

About Glenn Ligon
Glenn Ligon is an artist living and working in New York NY. Throughout his career, Ligon has pursued an incisive exploration of American history, literature and society across bodies of work that build critically on the legacies of modern painting and conceptual art.

He earned his BA from Wesleyan University in 1982, and attended the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program in 1985. In 2011, the Whitney Museum of American Art held a mid-career retrospective, ‘Glenn Ligon: AMERICA,’ organized by Scott Rothkopf, that
traveled nationally.

Important solo exhibitions include ‘Post-Noir,’ Carre d’Art, Nîmes, France (2022); ‘Call and Response,’ Camden Arts Centre, London, UK (2014); and ‘Some Changes,’ The Power Plant Center for Contemporary Art, Toronto, Canada (and then traveled internationally) (2005). Select curatorial projects include ‘Grief and Grievance,’ New Museum, New York NY (2021); ‘Blue Black,’ Pulitzer Arts Foundation, St. Louis MO (2017); and ‘Glenn Ligon: Encounters and Collisions,’ Nottingham Contemporary and Tate Liverpool, UK (2015). Ligon’s work has been shown in major international exhibitions, including the Venice Biennale (2015, 1997), Berlin Biennial (2014), Istanbul Biennial (2019, 2011) and Documenta XI (2002). His solo exhibition and curatorial project ‘All Over the Place,’ is currently on view at The Fitzwilliam Museum at the University of Cambridge, UK, through March 2025.

About Zoé Whitley
Dr Zoé Whitley is Director of Chisenhale Gallery in London, UK, which champions the next generation of artists through producing era-defining new commissions. She co-curated the acclaimed Tate Modern exhibition ‘Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power,’ and its subsequent international tour (2017 – 2020). Whitley has distinguished herself as a curator working in leading UK institutions, such as the British Council’s curator of the British Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, Italy (2019); Tate Modern, London, UK (2014 – 2019); Tate Britain (2013 – 2015); V&A, London, UK (2003 –2013).

She established Chisenhale Books, has authored the children’s titles ‘Meet the Artist: Frank Bowling’ (2019); ‘Meet the Artist: Sophie Taeuber-Arp’ (2021); and served as a consultant for the award-winning young adult reader ‘Black Artists Shaping the World,’ published by Thames & Hudson (2021). She has recently edited the monograph ‘solid!’ by Barkley L. Hendricks,’ published by Skira (2024).

Whitley is a member of the London Mayor’s Commission on Diversity in the Public Realm. She is a Trustee of the Teiger Foundation and Sir John Soane’s Museum.

About ‘Jack Whitten. Speedchaser’
Over the course of a six-decade career, Jack Whitten’s work has bridged rhythms of gestural abstraction and process art, arriving at a nuanced language of painting that hovers between mechanical automation and intensely personal expression.

Focusing on Whitten’s paintings and works on paper from the 1970s, this exhibition showcases a juncture in the artist’s painting career, which saw him reject the gestural brushstrokes of abstract expressionism in favor of experimental processes and materials. This includes rare works from Whitten’s landmark Greek Alphabet series (1975 – 1978), which was the focus of a dedicated exhibition at Dia Beacon, New York NY (2022 – 2023), consisting of variations of abstract, monochrome compositions and investigations into mark-making with handmade tools and techniques, including the comb, imprinting and frottage.

The exhibition will be on view from Monday 7 October – Saturday 21 December.

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Photographs will be taken at this event for use on the Hauser & Wirth website, social media and in other marketing materials.