Jeff Whetstone: Post-Pleistocene at The Gibbes Museum of Art
04/03/2009 - 07/19/2009
Location: The Gibbes Museum of Art
The photographs of North Carolina artist Jeff Whetstone will be on view in the exhibition Jeff Whetstone: Post-Pleistocene in the Rotunda Galleries at the Gibbes Museum of Art from April 3 through July 19, 2009.
In May of 2008, Whetstone was named the first winner of the Factor Prize for Southern Art. The Factor Prize, established by Elizabeth and Mallory Factor and awarded by the Gibbes Museum of Art, acknowledges an artist whose work demonstrates the highest level of artistic achievement in any media while contributing to a new understanding of art in the South.
Post-Pleistocene, Jeff Whetstone’s newest body of work, examines the history of man-made markings found within the depths of the Saltpetre caves of Tennessee and Alabama. From the vegetation surrounding the interior openings to the corridors and hidden rooms of these natural shelters, Whetstone’s large-format color photographs envelop viewers in the strange and foreboding darkness of spaces where all manner of people have taken refuge from the outside world.
During the Civil War, many of these caves were mined for their Saltpetre soil, which was used to produce gunpowder. Since then, the caves have become sites of lore, obsession, and extensive exploration, accumulating an expansive record of human markings, signatures, drawings, and messages on their walls. Some caves have been so heavily visited that the markings are several layers deep. They have elicited the voices of wild adolescents, homegrown explorers, civil war deserters, criminals, and scientists. Whetstone has photographed these caves from the vantage point of an artist, an explorer, an evolutionist, and a native son, and describes them as “cathedrals for human expression.”
