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By casting the spaces under ten mass-produced tables, Rachel Whiteread said that she set out “to bring an unregistered and forgotten space into the world.” As void becomes solid, what was merely the space under furniture becomes monumental, evoking the ghostly presence of the tables through their absence. The position of the tables is indicated, yet the tables could not be re-created from the sculpture—it is not a mold, and the process is not reversible. “It is rather bleak and unforgiving,” she said of the work, “but it contains all sorts of unanswered questions.” Whiteread associated this sculpture with her commission for a Holocaust Memorial in Vienna when the meetings about its design took place around a similar arrangement of tables. For the artist, these tables became a symbol of the emotionally fraught and contentious four years it took for Viennese politicians and Jewish community leaders to reach a consensus as to its existence and location.

Gallery label for installation of YCBA collection, 2016