Set in Motion: Kinetic Worlds from the Studio of Richard Whitten brings a collection of 59 paintings, sculptures, and drawings that explore Whitten’s body of work. Set in Motion includes four recent works by Whitten and follows his process from ideation to completion – beginning with drawings, then to painting studies, and on to large-scale works.

A close investigation of the artist’s use of spatial realism to depict scenes frozen in time and space is at the core of this project. Whitten pushes the boundaries of physics where unanticipated and unexpected shifts in forces animate devices once set in motion. A reoccurring subject, multiple wooden balls frozen in close proximity, where the viewer can almost hear the cracking sound of them colliding in his methodically created work. Architecture, engineering, and fantastic inventions coalesce in a carnival-like world that pays homage to classical art history and invention while evoking playfulness and whimsy. His oil-on-wood paintings integrate cross-cultural inflections of Chinese and Islamic architectural elements with the linear perspective drafting techniques perfected by Italian Renaissance artists that underpin global scientific and engineering draftsmanship to this day. Visitors are invited to immerse themselves in the pages of a twenty-first-century codex that showcases Whitten’s drawings of historic scientific instruments. These include works from the Medici collection at the Museo Galileo, Florence, arranged with pencil-on-paper prototypes of the artist’s invention and paired with his finished paintings.

Richard Whitten’s artistic practice grew out of his painterly desire to pivot from abstract expressionism to realism. He engages with scale to create intricate interior spaces. Custom-built easels facilitate the artist’s work on oversized eight-foot works. Minute details are rendered with mathematical precision using the finest of oil brushes. The frame, Whitten notes, is not a window but “an object that exists in the world of the viewer.” The resulting works invite the viewer to enter these kinetic worlds held in suspended animation and activated by their imagination. Set in Motion compels a natural discourse between Whitten’s contemporary oeuvre and the Morris Museum’s historical Guinness Collection of Mechanical Musical Instruments of Automata.