David Batchelor: Found Monochromes

Photographing white single squares and rectangles found in urban areas, David Batchelor’s Found Monochromes project expands the artist’s interrogation of colour, skill and the cityscape.

Since 1997, David Batchelor has been photographing single square and rectangle planes of uninterrupted white that he passes as he walks through London and places he visits. The images are informal and impromptu; shot from a uniform distance the white planes are seen on a diversity of backdrops: brick walls, car doors, metal fences and more.

Batchelor began this body of work after considering the history of the monochrome in painting, and the lack of skill associated with them in the work of Yves Klein and Ad Reinhardt, amongst others.

Bringing together the largest group of photographs from this series, a conversation between the philosopher Jonathan Ree and the artist focuses on the importance of monochromes to ideas of modernity, artificiality and the city.