“I am interested in making a visual record of something that is invisible – of something that is a void, a hole, or something that is so familiar it’s never even looked at.”
—Rachel WhitereadRachel Whiteread’s Herringbone Floor of 2001 transforms the humble parquet pattern into a finely crafted artwork, highlighting her fascination with domestic interiors and their overlooked textures. The work relates to earlier drawings Whiteread made of the floor of her Berlin apartment in 1992, when she completed a DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service) fellowship. Here Whiteread has taken the flooring’s recognisable grid of interlocking lines and mapped it onto a sheet of fine plywood. Using precise laser technology, the areas between the lines have been cut away, leaving a delicate, lace-like web of wood that captures the negative spaces between floor tiles. Scorched in places by the laser, the piece retains a tactile quality closely tied to that of floor itself.
Created over twelve months, Herringbone Floor is emblematic of Whiteread's meticulous process of capturing absence and memory in everyday settings. Her broader body of work often involves creating moulds of domestic objects and spaces – from doors to mattresses – preserving their shapes while reimagining their presence. This approach has evolved into a celebrated exploration of what she calls “hidden histories.” Through Herringbone Floor, Whiteread invites viewers to look beyond the ordinary and appreciate the traces and shadows of what is left behind.
“What I am doing is making a monument to an aspect of life that is often forgotten, a quiet celebration of people’s lives.”
—Rachel Whiteread
