Walead Beshty: Improvisation within Constraints
By Laura Heyrman
Los Angeles-based Walead Beshty (English, b. 1976) is an artist, writer and curator who is currently the subject of an exhibition, Profit and Loss, at Regen Projects in Los Angeles. Beshty’s works are driven by systematic processes that the artist creates for their production, but each project is underlaid by deeply considered issues of human society and how it both produces political and economic structures and is affected by those structures. The lengthy titles which Beshty applies to many of his works identify aspects of the creative process, including materials, dates, and locations.
“I tend to think of my work in terms of constraints, whether that be context, convention or material, and use their logics to generate the work. I guess that’s because I see life as an improvisation within constraints, and affirmative notions of selfhood, autonomy, freedom, etc., arise through the active negotiation with restriction.” – Walead Beshty
In this Viewing Room, I have included a selection of works from Beshty’s career with an emphasis on the recent works in his current exhibition. Each series of works in the artist’s oeuvre has its own set of rules directing the process of creation. The rules created constraints but by altering some aspect of each work, varied results were achieved.
The earliest project included here, from 2006-2008, is Travel Pictures in which Beshty deliberately used film which had been damaged by passing through x-ray scanners as he traveled to Berlin, Germany. In this period of his career, the artist was especially interested in abandoned structures. This set of photographs depicts an abandoned Iraqi diplomatic office in Berlin. After photographing his subject, Beshty once again sent his undeveloped film, unprotected, through the airport’s x-ray scanners. Each of the images in the series ended up with a wash of vivid color across the developed photograph.
In his next group of projects, beginning around 2004, Beshty began to explore the photogram process, in which the artist exposes photographic paper to light without using a camera. The process was pioneered by the 20th century American artist Man Ray who laid various objects on light sensitive paper to make his Rayograms. Beshty took a different approach by folding or bending large sheets of photographic paper and exposing them to light. In the Three Color Curl series (2008-2014), after curling the paper, sometimes repeatedly, the artist exposed the paper to three colors of light—cyan, magenta, and yellow as the prints were processed. The interaction of the colored light, the curling of the paper, and the processing itself led to different patterns of color in the prints. The results are visually abstract but Beshty prefers to call these works “concrete” and “literal” because the viewer sees both the image and the source of the image at the same time.
In his FedEx projects, begun in 2007, the artist shipped objects via FedEx, using materials that would capture the effects of the journey. Beshty shaped laminated glass into rectangles which exactly filled the dimensions of FedEx official and proprietary shipping containers. Those containers are combined with the damaged glass objects when the works are displayed, as seen below. The work of art becomes a record of its own journey. In the Fed Ex series, the artist was interested in the way in which corporations control aspects of contemporary life, specifically the idea that a company could “own” the shapes of the shipping containers.
Blind Collages, begun in 2017, are created from the front pages of local newspapers during the process of installation of Beshty’s exhibitions. Using a mat cutter, the artist cuts circles, each half the diameter of the one before, from the newspaper sheet. Then, each circle is rotated 180 degrees. The whole process takes place with the front page turned face-down, leading to the designation “blind” in the title. Pieces are taped into place, but can’t always be perfectly aligned. Gaps are filled with 22K gold, to emphasize the effect of human error.
The Banknote series, is a variant of the Blind Collage technique using legal currency from the country in which the work was made. In these works, Beshty is exploring questions of value, the values assigned by society to currency and to art. Issues of faith in institutions and aesthetics are also in play in these works.
The remaining works in this Viewing Room are included in the Profit and Loss exhibition, though they represent three different projects. One of Beshty’s newest bodies of work is a group of sculptures called Smart Objects. Consisting of pieces of building rubble with the addition of small antennas, these sculptures look like prehistoric versions of technology: radios, pagers, and routers. These works suggest the ways in which our society is quick to dispose of what we no longer need in favor of something newer and up-to-date.
A series of black and white photographs comprise the (Temporary) Homes for Americans series begun in 2021. These depict recreational vehicles and motor homes parked along Union Pacific Avenue in Los Angeles. Photographed in a straight or documentary style, these vehicles intended for recreation are now near-permanent homes to the working poor. The series is a socio-political commentary about abandoned people forced to live in desolate, post-industrial sites by forces far beyond their control.
The largest works in the exhibition are part of Beshty’s Bandit Sign Painting series. “Bandit signs” are any which is attached to public or private property without official approval. Many such signs are innocuous but others suggest a questionable or underground economy. The artist first began collecting such signs during the international economic crisis of 2007-2008. In this series, the artist enlarges these signs proportionally until they create looming objects, intended to suggest the economic desperation of those who might seek the services offered. The large versions include layered materials with cut out sections obscuring the message. This layering mimics the way billboards and public message boards build up over time only to decay into strange incomprehensible arrays of patterns and colors. For the smaller versions, Beshty used oil pastels on newsprint; the oil soaks into the paper leaving a thick vivid layer of pigment that obscures the newspaper’s content. Throughout this project the artist explores systems of commerce in which we are all participants, consciously or not.
Throughout his career, Walead Beshty has created works in which the systematic processes he devised set limits while also providing opportunities to create innovative works. This process-based practice allows the artist to explore the aesthetic, economic, and political concepts in which he is interested.
Walead Beshty: Profit and Loss continues at Regen Projects, 6750 Santa Monica Boulevard, Los Angeles, California, 90038, through December 21, 2024.
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The lengthy titles and material descriptions favored by this artist may not be fully visible on smaller screens. We apologize for the inconvenience.
The long captions will obscure parts of the artworks in the slide show; click on the image to turn off the caption.
