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A Look at Walead Beshty

by Nico Machida

Science Concréte

China Art Objects Galleries

933 Chung King Road, Los Angeles, CA 90012

January 7, 2008 - February 8, 2008

Since the turn of this century, Walead Beshty has been putting the medium of photography into the service of various social and political critiques, with consumerism chief among his targets. In series like “The Phenomenology of Shopping,” 2001-2003, which depicts Beshty variously fondling, inhabiting, and becoming one with everyday commodity displays, the fact of photographic capture seems to verify and seal the literalness of the artist’s critical act. In this work, the conceptual rigor of the image’s content is rejoined by the cool detachment of Beshty’s photographic eye. From wittily dry angles, some complex mockery is turned plain fact.

Science Concréte, an exhibition of Beshty’s new work at China Art Objects Galleries and Redling Fine Art, at once points back to the artist’s enduring interest in the documentary essence of his chosen medium and signals a distinct evolution in his engagement with its history. At present, Beshty seems to have traveled further back in art historical time for formal cues, beyond Conceptual Art to the very origins of the photographic medium, to an interest in the chemical effects produced by light hitting a treated surface. In the simply-framed panels that form a bulk of the show’s content, Beshty has repeatedly folded pieces of photographic paper, seemingly at random, into several geometric planes; upon processing, these forms take on rich jewel tones and begin to read as luminous abstract compositions. The resultant sensibility is straightforwardly beautiful, and the fact that this beauty is created by nothing more than an image of the photographic process seems in no way incidental: Before focused on a received faith in photography’s verisimilitude, Beshty seems determined now to expound upon its inherent indexicality.

- Nico Machida

(*Images, from top to bottom: Walead Beshty, Science Concréte, January 7 - February 8, 2008; China Art Objects, 2 Sided Picture (Blue), November 22, 2007, Los Angeles, CA Kodak Supra; 2008, Color Photographic Paper, 50 x 82 inches (127 x 108.3 cm), Image courtesy of the artist and China Art Objects Galleries, Los Angeles, CA.Walead Beshty, Science Concréte, January 7 - February 8, 2008; China Art Objects, 2 Sided Picture (Blue/Yellow), November 22, 2007, Los Angeles, CA Kodak Supra; 2008, Color Photographic Paper, 50 x 82 inches (127 x 108.3 cm), Image courtesy of the artist and China Art Objects Galleries, Los Angeles, CA.)

Posted by Nico Machida on 1/27/08