Jim Whiting

I was once in a taxi with Jean Tinguely when it took a wrong turning into a building site.  Suddenly we found ourselves trapped inside high wire fencing, surrounded by working cranes, among piles of rubble and dust, with a colossal digger driving directly at us, its driver out of sight behind its great descending, Tyrannosaurus-toothed maw. The cab driver panicked and reversed rapidly and chaotically. Tinguely was very excited, bouncing up and down on his seat. ‘It’s Jim! It’s Jim Whiting!’ he cried. 

Jim Whiting is Tinguely’s craziest successor – though his art is very different.  It’s an unforgettable concatenation of his response to the madness of modern urban life combined with elements from his dysfunctional Catholic upbringing in Africa.  In his nightclub Bimbo Town, the extraordinary creation of one extraordinary mind, human beings hunt and are hunted, drink and devour, fuck and get fucked, kick and get their kicks, all amid bucketfuls of laughter. Whiting is, without doubt, one of the greatest sculptors of our times. 

He’s never had, nor sought a grant – he thinks they’re the death of art. How can an artist know in advance what he’s going to create?  That’s why his art is so profound, and its content so radically and imaginatively exposed.

For more information please visit: www.bimbotown.de

Bimbo Town   1995 – ongoing
Leipzig, Germany
A sofa that eats people

Luna-Luna
Performance/Installation