Malmö Konsthall presents WALEAD BESHTY – a diagram of forces on view 19 February – 1 May 2011.
Walead Beshtys works remind us how important it is to appreciate the transitory nature of daily life, especially its gaps, its pauses, and its moments of in-betweenness. This in-between time has always been central to Walead Beshty’s work. In his early works the theme of ‘in-betweenness’ is literally represented in the sites he chose to photograph. His Excursionist Views (2001–2005) show failed, depopulated modernist housing developments that sit precariously between evacuation and demolition, Island Flora (2005) documents the plants, weeds, and vegetation contained within isolated highway medians that, left to their own devices, have grown unruly, while the series of photographs of abandoned shopping malls, titled American Passages (2001–ongoing), present the mercantile and capitalistic nightmare of empty, closed shops.
These three projects all confront the urban landscape as a problem of ‘in-betweenness,’ depicting locations trapped in a state of geographic and temporal limbo, neither fully abandoned, nor actively integrated into the urban context. More recently, this engagement with the in-between has grown into a means of production, making use of such mundane procedures as air travel or sending a package, activities that usually recede into the background of an artist’s productive life.
In tandem, Beshty explores various issues associated with photographic representation, specifically that of transparency, and the resulting works both revisit and complicate early modernist practices. While homages to influential figures such as László Moholy-Nagy can be found in his Pictures Made by My Hand with the Assistance of Light (2006)—which were based on an apocryphal story of a missing body of Nagy’s work—these references appear in more subtle ways in works such as Dust (2009) (2010), or Six Color Loop (CMYRGB: Irvine, California, July 16th 2008, Fuji Crystal Archive Type C) (2009). Beshty’s photograms attempt to demystify photography and mine the gaps in its historical narrative; the paper and its folds serve both as an expression of photographic materiality and as an exploration of photography’s technological development.
Transparency—how a work is produced and by whom—is also vital for Beshty, and since 2005 his works reveal their productive processes both in their form and in their titles. In Travel Pictures (2006/2008) he discovered how he could work productively with issues of chance within the production of photographs. After realizing how his unexposed film was affected by passing it through the high-powered X-ray machines at the airport, Beshty began to use travel as part of his work. What at first seemed to be simply discolored damage left on his film (a side effect of the Xray machines) developed into a multifaceted body of work in which the situations surrounding the work—the production or shipment of the artwork and the travel an artist engages in—were directly manifest, pushing his investigation of transparency into new territories.
Fold (60º/120º/180º/240º/300º/360º directional light sources) June 5th 2008, Annandale-On-Hudson, New York, Foma Multigrade Fiber (2009); Transparency (Negative) [Kodak NC Color Film: May 28–June 29, 2008 ORD/LAX LAX/ JFK JFK/LAX] (2008) and 20-inch Copper (FedEx® Large Kraft Box ©2005 FEDEX 330508), International Priority, Los Angeles–Tijuana trk# 865282058011 October 28–30, 2008, International Priority, Tijuana–Los Angeles trk# 867279774929 January 2–6, 2009, International Priority, Los Angeles–London trk# 867279774881 January 14–16, 2009 (2008–), are three examples of different bodies of work that represent Beshty’s approach to transparency in literal and symbolic ways. In each of these instances, the artwork is inextricable from the incidental circumstances of its making (be it time, travel, or light). From his early inquiries into the problem of photographic transparency, the means of production and how the work enters the world has become a chief concern.
Welcome to the opening Friday February 18, 5-9 p.m. Director Jacob Fabricius introduces the exhibition at 7.30 p.m.
Image: Walead Beshty, “Three Color Curl (CMY/Four Magnet: Irvine, California, January 1st 2010, Fujicolor Crystal Archive Super Type C, Em. No. 165-021, 01110,” 2010. Color photographic paper.
Malmö Konsthall, S:t Johannesgatan 7, Box 17127, SE-200 10 Malmö, Sweden
www.konsthall.malmo.se