KIRK HOPPER FINE ART

 MAC WHITNEY

SCULPTURES FROM THE 1970s

Nowhere are Whitney’s special gifts more evident than in the free-flowing sculptures of plate steel produced during the mid 1970s, a period when he lived and worked in Dallas among the fiercely independent Oak Cliff artists. Kirk Hopper Fine Art is honored to present 20 of the robust works that reveal Whitney’s early mental and physical capacities to stretch, reach and explore the fabric of a free-standing form through the richly corrosive texture of aging metals.

Industrial and organic, inside and outside, mechanical and sexual, passive and aggressive, functionalism and poetic license are just a few oppositions which the sculptures manage to blend in surprising ways. As a group, they recapitulate memory, audacious formal rigor and hard manual labor, while also giving viewers the artist’s sense of surface, texture, space and surprise at the perception of solid and void. Whitney is far from a finish fetishist, but we can’t resist touching, even caressing the configurations of smooths planes and tough “skin.” To walk around them in the gallery is to sense a reflex we may not have felt so clearly before – pull, sensuousness, illusion, but also insecurity, risk and danger. Component parts take on a fierce internal energy – things come out of things, pushing, nudging, linking their outer parts. In Whitney’s hands, a wavy line becomes personal, what he once compared to “slamming a brand on a steer.” Here, line becomes plane, only to transubstantiate into a scribble of smooth and jagged lines again.

At KHFA, this unprecedented gathering of Whitney’s sculptures bridges the gap between two dimensional drawing and three dimensional structure. The metaphorical objects claim space while fleetingly suggesting landscape elements, a dance of abstract shapes animated by gritty and saturated color, or as casually drawn as distant plains. The raw or burnished metal reflects its surroundings as a way to integrate color and form. Move around Whitney’s sculptures and watch how the characteristics change with the light of day. The slightest shift and they yield a dazzling array of complex, tactile facets now multiplied in the play of reflected light, a constant state of tension between abstract concept and natural form.

One’s response to the sculptures certainly has something to do with the care and fine-tuning that Whitney put into them. And therein lies Whitney’s fearless power – to temper the unyielding brutality of his medium with the intimacy of human touch. – Susie Kalil, 2025

Kirk Hopper Fine Art
1426 N Riverfront Blvd
Dallas, TX 75207
214.760.9230
www.kirkhopperfineart.com