Mike White

2022

Bronze, Steel, Central Beam from My Burned Down Home / Studio in Providence

72” x 24” x 24”

2020

Bronze, Steel, Marble Stair from a Mansion in Newport

50” x 24” x 24”

2019

Bronze, Steel, Beam From A 100 Year Old House In Warsaw

72” x 24” x 24”

2019

Digital Color Video
Duration: 00:20:00, Looped

Made in collaboration with Jingwei Deng

2017

60” x 15” x 15”

Leather, Canvas, Chain, Sand, Old Clothes

This piece is part of an on-going body of work on themes in masculinity. I examined the leather punching bag as a practice stand-in for a person, with leather as a literal stand in for skin. I explored similar actions of violence and survival and how these play into a modern context. I sewed the bag by hand, doing a job that is traditionally portrayed as feminine, as a means of producing an overtly masculine object and practiced boxing throughout this work. This bag is accompanied by a video of a deer being skinned in reverse.

2023

55” x 16” x 16”

Deer Hide, Hooves, Steel, Twine, Mixed Media

2019

Two Channel, Digital Color Video

Duration: 00:16:00, Looped

Made in collaboration with Arden Wren Sawyer

2023

Neon

16” x 36”


Made in collaboration with PeiXin Liu

2016 — 2018

72” x 24” x 72”

20 min. Looped Video Projection, Glass, Steel

2019

13” x 8” x 13”

Bronze

2017 - 2022

Bed Sheet, Pillowcase, Beeswax, Doorframe

54” x 94”

2016

Hickory, Two 2.5 Ton Comealongs 

6’ x 12’ x 2’

Two 100lb balls of hickory are suspended from the ceiling. I moved each one by myself, to various locations, during the process of cutting and sanding away material as I attempted to form each piece into a sphere. In the final installation, the comealongs used to hang the wooden balls were made visible, and the two pieces were suspended just above the floor. This piece was an exploration of hyper masculinity through physical labor and exertion. The small space where they hover above the floor is indicative of the precarious nature of the forms.

2017

11” x 14” (triptych)

Gelatin Silver Prints

2018

6 Uniforms, Clothesline, Pulleys, Cast Iron Weights, Color 4k Video Live Feed  (Duration: 01:03:00)

8’ x 15’ x 1’

For this work, I made six identical uniforms of white cotton and, with a team, reproduced Pei Xin Liu’s The Invisible Empowerment Chair that considered gender roles, performativity and social boundaries. For the filming of the accompanying video, I locked the door of a hot glass facility and placed a monitor outside of the room with a live feed of the production of the chair. As the performance took place, the clothes picked up the dirt of the labor, in reference to Pina Bausch’s Rite of Spring. 

Special Thanks to Performers: Nasser Alzayani, Eli Backer, Cindy Del Rio, Arden Wren Sawyer, and YiYi Wei

2018

Lighthouse, Boat, 2 Lights, Morse Code Script

Digital Color Video, Duration: 01:00:00

A boat and a lighthouse deliver an excerpt from conversation I had over a cup of tea with Arden about changes in the understanding of the nature of light.

We transcribed the conversation and delivered it from a mile apart in morse code, mimicking the use of light as a coded communication from lighthouses to boats at sea.

Made in collaboration with Arden Wren Sawyer

Dimensions Variable

2 Windows, 2 Palms, 2 Red Bathingsuits, Polaroids, Video Projection

An installation proposed for the Xintiandi district of Shanghai, China. This installation uses shop windows as a projection screen to discuss issues of inaccessibility, the movement of goods into a city center, and who has the right to access a given space.

60” x 40”

Halftone Inkjet Print and Polyurethane on Canvas

48” x 72” x 24”

Steel, Steel Mesh, Wood Glue, Paper Pulp, Expanding Foam, Paint

72” x 24” x 18”

Steel, Vinyl, Aluminum Sliding Window, Menu Signs

This is a replica of an ice cream stand window that was located a mile from my childhood home, just outside of the Quonset Point Air National Guard Station where my father was an electrician for government submarines. It fell into disrepair, and I viewed this ice cream shop was a symbol of dangerous nostalgic rhetoric in the current political climate, given its proximity to the National Guard Station while also being  an accessible image to discuss the sensation of child-like disappointment when going to an ice cream shop only to find that it is closed.

36” x 60” x 24”

Silicone, Stainless Steel, Artificial Grass

Good Egg, Bad Egg is an exploration of pedagogy and our tendency to decide many children's academic worth at a very early age, which dictates the opportunities afforded to them later in life. This is often a systemic problem, and affects people of lower income levels in higher quantities. This, in some ways, is similar to the idea of original sin in Christian mythologies, where the egg is used as a symbol of rebirth. Here, the egg is used as an example of the dichotomous "good egg" or "bad egg" idiom used to describe children who are perceived as having high or low potential, respectively. I placed these on fake grass carpeting to consider the artificiality of these labels.

72” x 70” x 36”

Cast Iron Bathtub, 119 lbs of Tap Water, Steel, House Siding Boards, Shower Curtain, Rope, Show Head Apparatus, Pump

2017

5’ x 12’ x 7’

Graphite, 180lbs of Charcoal, 140lbs of Asphalt, Rope, Fiberglass, Crib

2016

5’ x 4’ x 5.5’

1947 GE Electric Stove, Antique Windows, Red Pot, Water

144" x 144" x 144"

Oil Paint, Glass, Canvas, Sod

My goal was to make an immersive environment in a 12' x 12' room. The space, while remaining surreal to the participant, maintains an organic nature and changes drastically when small changes are made to the environment.

2016

Kiln-Cast Glass

28” x 15” x 5”

2” x 4”

Machine Embroidery on Converse High Top

2022

Prussian Blue Pigment Made With The Artist's Blood, Syringe, Aluminum, Written Statement

18” x 15”