reviews walead beshty
wAleAd Beshty:
science
concrete
Dead Leg, 2007, oak and stainless steel,
China art ObjeCts Galleries /
240 x 850 x 270 cm. Courtesy la louver,
los angeles redlinG Fine art, lOs anGeles
7 january – 8 February
The title for Walead Beshty’s current exhibitions refers to an
idea developed by Lévi-Strauss to understand a different kind
of science that predates our own. ‘Science of the concrete’, or
‘mythical thought’, as Lévi-Strauss also refers to it in his book The
Savage Mind (1962), is a kind of ‘intellectual bricolage’, taking what
is on hand to deal with the world, rather than inventing a new tool.
In the realm of photography, where Beshty has done most of his
work, this takes the form of aleatory photos and sculptures that
explore a politics of aesthetics. Where do photographs come
from? What is the process in which they are made? Rather than
being wholly extruded from the earth in seamless and seductive
snaps, Beshty’s recent series of photographs are created with
very clear prescriptions for creation, and rather than inventing
new tools, he uses the established practices at hand. Beshty
folds the photo paper into radically different shapes and sends it
through the regular processing machines. The folds and chemical
fixatives result in strange colours and fractured patterns burned
into the paper, like anarchic stained-glass windows.
Rather than snapshots of the world, the photograms deal
directly with the play of light on paper. While the early pioneer of
photograms László Moholy-Nagy used it as a formal experiment
with light, Beshty uses the photogram as a material experiment
with photographic process. In an effort to reveal every stage
of this process, Beshty has included within the exhibitions
photographs of photo-lab staff, the dealers assigned to sell the
work and the machines on which it is created, all of which reveal
many of the same coloured marks and imprimaturs as the folded
photograms.
Alongside the photograms and photographs are two sets of sculptures, both with different SSCC 139751 REV 10/05 FedEx(R) Large Box, Priority
Overnight (Los Angeles-Berlin trk#846690884209, Berlin-
but equally notable connections to the artist’s photographic practice and each defined by the
Los Angeles trk#852272429633), 2007, mixed media,
shape of FedEx boxes, the tool of transit for much of the work. One set is made of selected (and I
dimensions variable. Courtesy the artist and China art
Objects Galleries, los angeles
presume failed) photoworks by the artist, shredded, mixed with concrete and shaped into blocky
abstract forms by the FedEx boxes. One might point to John Baldessari’s famous act of torching
all his paintings, but this in some ways furthers the demystification involved in the artistic process;
all of the failures are included in the arrangement, along with the successes. The other set are
shatter-proof glass boxes displayed stacked on top of the FedEx boxes they’ve travelled in from
their inception, both indelibly battered from their transit.
The whole breadth of both shows, which included at least four different series of works,
follows the process of creation, transit and distribution of a work of art. But the works themselves
are not overly weighted with their conceptual intentions. They retain a cracked elegance: modern,
strange and nearly alchemical, even though the mysteries implied by alchemy are nowhere to
be found. Though, like Sol Lewitt’s wall drawings, the artist attempts to demystify the process,
knowing how they are made takes nothing away from their beauty. Andrew Berardini
159 Artreview
march_REVIEWS.indd 159 5/2/08 13:52:17
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