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Wendy White's (b. 1971) paintings are permeated by quasi-recognizable iconography, text, and logos juxtaposed with atmospheric grounds—archetypes of a personal pictorial code. Taking cues from historical periods in American culture and the urban environment, White's fluorescent hues are animated by nontraditional materials and atomized paint. In many of her works, three-dimensional forms abut and overlap canvas supports to create shapes that are not bound by traditional forms, expanding and escaping classical painting dynamics.
White was born in Deep River, Connecticut. She received a BFA in Fibers from the Savannah College of Art & Design in 1993 and a MFA in Painting from Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University in 2003.
A 10-year retrospective of White’s work entitled Low Pressure was held at Museum Goch in Germany in 2021. In 2018, White opened American Idyll at the SCAD Museum of Art in Savannah, GA. In the same year, Takashi Murakami curated Rainbow Bridge, a solo exhibition of White's paintings, at Kaikai Kiki in Tokyo, Japan.
In 2023, a large-scale mobile entitled Harmonic Balance was completed for the lobby of Chelsea Piers Fitness Center in Brooklyn, NY. Additional public projects include a permanent outdoor sculpture at SCAD Lacoste in Provence, France (2022) and a 50-foot outdoor mural commissioned by the Kranzberg Arts Foundation in St. Louis, MO (2021). Sports stadium commissions include the Detroit Pistons Practice Facility (2019); Rocket Mortgage Field House in Cleveland, OH (2019), and Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta, GA (2017).
White's work has been featured in solo exhibitions at Gaa Gallery, New York, NY; Kaikai Kiki, Tokyo; lange + pult, Zürich; Leo Koenig Inc., New York; Shulamit Nazarian, Los Angeles; COUNTY, Palm Beach; Maruani Noirhomme, Brussels; VAN HORN, Düsseldorf; Denny Dimin, New York; David Castillo, Miami; Eric Firestone Gallery, New York; Andrew Rafacz, Chicago; Galerie Jérôme Pauchant, Paris; Sherrick & Paul, Nashville; and Galeria Moriarty, Madrid. Two-person exhibitions include Kunstverein Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz, Berlin, Germany; Von Ammon Co., Washington, DC; Capital Gallery, San Francisco, CA; and Cabinet, Milan, Italy.
Significant group exhibitions include Resistance Training: Arts, Sports, and Civil
Rights at Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum in East Lansing, MI; curated by Steven L. Bridges and Thais Wenstrom (2023); ACE: Art on Sports, Promise, and Selfhood at University at Albany Art Museum in Albany, NY (2019); Globe as a Palette: Contemporary Art from the Taguchi Art Collection at Hokkaido Obihiro Museum of Art in Obihiro, Japan (2019); The World’s Game: Fútbol and Contemporary Art at Pérez Art Museum in Miami, FL, curated by Franklin Sirmans and Jennifer Ignacio (2018); Full of Peril and Weirdness: Painting as a Universalism at M Woods, Beijing, China, curated by Robin Peckham and Wanwan Lei (2015); and Fútbol: The Beautiful Game at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in Los Angeles, CA, curated by Franklin Sirmans (2013).
White was awarded the Teiger Teaching Mentorship at Cornell University (2019); a Painting Fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts (2012); a George & Helen Segal Foundation Painting Grant (2005); The Marie Walsh Sharpe Art Foundation Residency (2004); and the Leon Golub Scholarship (2001). Her work was included in Phaidon’s anthology Vitamin P2: New Perspectives in Painting with an essay by Barry Schwabsky (2011).
Public collections include Detroit Institute of the Arts, Detroit, MI; The High Museum, Atlanta, GA; RISD Art Museum, Providence, RI; Museum Goch, Goch, Germany; Bank of America, New York, NY; Kranzberg Art Foundation, St. Louis, MO; Saks Fifth Avenue, New York, NY; Taguchi Art Collection, Tokyo, Japan; UK Art Museum, Lexington, KY; Mercedes-Benz Stadium, Atlanta, GA; Savannah College of Art & Design, Savannah, GA and Lacoste, France; UBS Art Collection, New York, NY; Progressive Art Collection, Mayfield, OH; Red Bull Art Collection; The Shinola Hotel, Detroit, MI; and ARCO Foundation, Madrid, Spain.
White lives and works in New York, NY.