Rachel Whiteread - House

This work of sculpture explicitly approaches the domain of architecture, with its concerns for interior and exterior space and habitation. The gaps between the different blocks and the fact that the entire sculpture was pre-destined to be destroyed particularly resonate with me. I read that Whiteread tends to make her sculptures negatives of the objects they are meant to represent: the sculpture is a mold cast around the actual object. "House" suggests a more ethereal version of such a process--a house itself is a mold that limits and delimits the space of an inhabitant's movements and body. The ultimate destruction of the sculpture makes manifest the transience of such limitations and the insufficiency of dwelling space to contain and define the individual.