Douglas White

About Douglas White

Like a contemporary shaman, Douglas White re-enchants the world, scavenging the detritus of society and compulsively transforming it into strange, monumental sculptures. His work is driven by a fascination with the possibilities of discarded and overlooked materials and articulates an affinity with found objects, both natural and man-made.

Like a contemporary shaman, Douglas White re-enchants the world, scavenging the detritus of society and compulsively transforming it into strange, monumental sculptures. His work is driven by a fascination with the possibilities of discarded and overlooked materials and articulates an affinity with found objects, both natural and man-made. Exploded tyres, arson-struck recycling bins, decaying trees: the materials have often been subject to a violent change, revealing an inner delicacy or potency. Recent pieces develop his preoccupation with transformation: sheets of MDF laid out on a steel table are scarred with 'fractal burns' that White creates by using an electrical charge with an extremely high voltage. So the resulting fine, infinitely delicate arboreal shapes are simultaneously indexes and representations of lightning hitting a tree. Again, his use of found materials and natural processes is intuitive and ambiguous, seeing aesthetic and formal possibilities where others see only junk, as White himself puts it, "finding something magical within the everyday and revealing it through an action

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