Opening Reception Thursday, September 23rd, 6:00 - 9:00 pm

Accompanied by a scholarly monograph

The voyage - the physical trajectory - of African-American sculptor, Tim Whiten, has carried him from the Detroit suburb of Inkster to graduate school in Oregon; from a period in Vietnam, to a fecund 30-year residency as an artist and professor at York University in Toronto, and a residency at the acclaimed Sacatar Foundation in Brazil. This physical journey, however, is small in comparison to the expanse of his spiritual and artistic travels.

Eminent sculptor Tim Whiten has been creating work of amazing conceptual depth and outstanding formal power since the 1970s. From his early and continued use of human and animal remains, especially human skulls, to his present work in glass, Whiten has employed a wide range of materials with clarity and profundity.

While currently regarded as an outstanding voice in Canadian art and culture, most recently with a major permanent installation in the recent Frank Gehry addition to the Art Gallery of Ontario, Whiten remains little known in the United States in relation to his artistic achievement. This exhibition will serve as the first career-spanning survey of this prolific artist, and will feature his early wrapped stone pieces, selections of the Descendant of Parsifal series (human skulls with glass eyes, covered with chewing gum, graphite, glue, and leather), selections of the Enigmata Rose series (hospital sheets stained with coffee), numerous drawings, the sculpture Metamorphosis (an inverted bear skin lined with bells), clay and gold works, and many works previously unseen.

Far from being able to embrace the entirety of his vast output, this exhibition attempts to focus on the threads of continuity which unite the major epochs of his artistic career as he enters the fullness and maturity of his powers as an artist.

Whiten was born in Inkster Michigan to African American parents in 1941. In 1964, he received a B.S. in art and psychology from Central Michigan University, College of Applied Arts and Science, and in 1966 completed his M.F.A. at the University of Oregon, School of Architecture and Allied Arts. Whiten immigrated to Canada in 1968 and has since taught in the Department of Visual Art at York University, where he served twice as chair of the Art Department holding the position of full professor until his retirement in 2007. Tim Whiten also received formal study in the Kabbala and was trained in Zen practice at Zuiho-In, Daitoko-Ji, Zen Monastery Kyoto in Japan.