SHAQÚELLE WHYTE

Shaqúelle Whyte b. 2000 in Wolverhampton, UK lives and works in London, UK. Grief-stricken and riddled with anxiety, Whyte’s paintings speak to a wider feeling prevelant in today’s society. Pulling from his interest in dystopian literature, soap operas and theatre the works are dramatic and uncanny. Whyte sets the stage much like a director, placing his characters into a range of situations, seemingly unconnected to the next. One continual thread is the masked characters that populate Whyte’s paintings, representing ‘the elite’ of the artists world. The main characters, unmasked and vulnerable, seem desperate and anxious to join them.

The artist uses the paintings as a platform to express his own vulnerability surrounding maintaining close relationships and uncertainty surrounding the future. The works are at once intimate and distant as the artist lays his insecurities out onto his subjects to question, prod and poke at them with the paintbrush.  

Shows include 2022 Degree Show, Slade School of Art, UCL, UK, 2022; 20 (What Now?), PM AM Gallery, UK, 2022; The Ashurst Emerging Artist Prize Shortlist, Ashurst Emerging Artists Gallery, UK, 2021; 4 Year Anniversary, Delphian gallery, London, UK, 2021; Unmasked, Daniel Raphael Gallery, London, UK, 2020.