Walead Beshty, Selected Bodies of Work (Installation View), all photos by Brian Forrest, all images Courtesy the artist and Regen Projects, Los Angeles

Currently on view at Regen Projects in Los Angeles is an exhibition of new work by L.A.-based English photographer, writer and sculptor Walead Beshty, featuring photographs, sculptures, ceramics, and collages surrounding a theme of bodies and labor, specifically in relation to the physical process of art making.

Walead Beshty, Selected Bodies of Work (Installation View)

Beshty was born in London in 1976 and earned a BA from Bard College in 1999 before earning an MFA from Yale University School of Art in 2002. He is currently an Associate Professor in the Graduate Art Department of Art Center College of Design in L.A., and his work is included in the permanent collections of museums across the U.S. and UK, including but not limited to the Art Institute of Chicago; the Guggenheim Museum, New York; The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; The Victoria and Albert Museum, London; and the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles.

Walead Beshty, Selected Bodies of Work (Installation View)

For the current exhibition, Beshty has created a series of photograms entitled RA4 Contact Prints, produced on an ageing color processor, which, due to its deterioration, makes serrated color lines across the picture plane, making visible the processor’s misaligned parts and frequent jamming. In a similar series, titled Cross-Contaminated RA4 Contact Prints, Beshty reveals handprints as they make contact with the surface of the photograph during exposure, highlighting the developing process and showing the labor involved in the analogue photographic process by injecting a physical imprint. Also on display are deconstructed computers, printers, projectors, and scanners on aluminum rods, visualizing the machines that experience this “mechanical breakdown.”

Walead Beshty, Selected Bodies of Work (Installation View)

Also on view are a group of ceramics Beshty created while in Cerámico Suro in Guadalajara Mexico, made from the byproducts of the institution’s past productions. The artist collected tabloids featuring sensationalist stories, violent crimes, advertizements for escort services, and sports news, and cobbled them together, using spare materials and a clustered technique that places the work somewhere between cultural detritus and sculptural abstraction, with the intent to “depict the traffic, exchange, and monetization of human bodies.”

Walead Beshty, Selected Bodies of Work (Installation View)

Challenging modes of work and techniques of depiction in the modern landscape, Beshty’s exhibition is on view at Regen Projects in Los Angeles through April 5, 2014.

Walead Beshty, Selected Bodies of Work (Installation View)

Walead Beshty, Selected Bodies of Work (Installation View)

—E. Baker

Related Links:
Exhibtion Page [Regen Projects]

This entry was posted on Friday, April 4th, 2014 at 12:00 am and is filed under Art News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.