In the work of Stanley Whitney, color and structure, two fundamental aspects of abstract painting, become color as structure. Blocks of green, yellow, light and dark red, orange and blue, line up and pack together, at times slightly overlapping, while piling up in four or five vertical levels. Horizontal lines run between one row and another, uniting, dividing, as well as serving other, more mysterious functions. In the lower levels the blocks, square or rectangular, are usually smaller: they seem to have settled, crushed under the weight of the others, as happens in the deep geological layers of the earth. The square becomes the quintessence of the work, a founding-archetypal biology, an immediate and concrete contribution to a concept of pure visibility.

Where color and movement are concerned, Whitney's visual „call-and-response“ has a musical counterpoint. The colors create rhythm and thus sound: counterpoint, cadences both regular and syncopated, related to jazz. Whitney arrives at a synthesis of dissonance and harmony without ever repeating himself, creating a visual polyrhythm.