Black Curl (CMY/Five Magnet: Irvine, California, March 25, 2010, Fujicolor Cyrstal Archive Super Type C, EM No 165-021, 05910) is a visually compelling photogram. Bold shapes, and the breaks between them, create a rhythm and compose an engaging abstract image. At the same time, the work deals with the conditions of the photograph’s manufacture. The literal production of a photograph—the process of photo developing and printing—is the work’s subject, and Beshty slyly points to the ways in which these material processes possess their own aesthetic appeal and content.
Artist and writer Walead Beshty examines the processes of his own multidisciplinary (though primarily photographic) work’s production, linking these processes to global issues including human migration,displacement, and technology. His works, oftentimes visually abstracted, argue for their own production as a process of transformation, emphasizing an expansive array of actions and methods through which art can be structurally transformed or produced. In this way, by examining the matrix of production surrounding his individual artworks, Beshty’s introspection also expands outward onto a complex field of vectors connecting actions, subjects, structures, and forms. Beshty explores the limitations and possibilities of his mediums, which include photography, light, metal, glass, cardboard, and, often, distance. Often striking in their visual presence, his work reflects the movement of images and objects, both in a literal sense and in terms of the way that ideas and materials are circulated and exchanged. They also convey another narrative: the history and the processes that construct both the world and his art.
Rudolph Schindler’s designs, part of a practice he called “Space Architecture,” marry interior with exterior and space with light...
Wolfgang Tillmans initiated the ongoing series Faltenwurf in 1989, representing compositions of unused clothing, with special attention paid to the ways in which they drape and fold...
Lambri’s careful framing in Untitled (Miller House, #02) redefines our understanding of this iconic mid-century modernist building located in Palm Springs, California...
The Tower of Babel is an installation of large-format photographs that forces the audience to occupy a central position through its monumental scale...
The Damaged series by Lisa Oppenheim takes a series of selected photographs from the Chicago Daily News (1902 – 1933) as its source material...
Intentionally Left Blanc alludes to the technical process of its own (non)production; a procedure known as retro-reflective screen printing in which the image is only fully brought to life through its exposure to flash lighting...
Bruce Conner is best known for his experimental films, but throughout his career he also worked with pen, ink, and paper to create drawings ranging from psychedelic patterns to repetitious inkblot compositions...
Although best known as a provocateur and portraitist, Opie also photographs landscapes, cityscapes, and architecture...
Custom-built for a silent film star in 1934 in Santa Monica, the Sten-Frenke House is an idiosyncratic icon...
The print Patient Admission, US Naval Hospital Ship Mercy, Vietnam (2010) features an Asian Buddhist monk and an American Navy Solider on board the Mercy ship –one of the two dedicated hospital ships of the United States Navy– sitting upright in their chairs and adopting the same posture...
To explore the boundaries between artwork and audience, Gimhongsok created a series of sculptural performances in which a person wearing an animal costume poses in the gallery...
Golia’s Untitled 3 is an installation in which a mechanical device is programmed to shoot clay pigeons that are thrown up in front of a white wall...
Catherine Opie’s candid photograph Cathy (bed Self-portrait) (1987) shows the artist atop a bed wearing a negligee and a dildo; the latter is attached to a whip that she holds in her teeth...
The version of Frontier acquired by the Kadist Collection consists of a single-channel video, adapted from the monumental installation and performance that Aitken presented in Rome, by the Tiber River, in 2009...
Glenn Ligon’s diptych, Condition Repor t is comprised of two side-by-side prints...
In this photographic series, Yto Barrada was interested in the logos of the buses that travel between North Africa and Europe...
Like many of Pascal Shirley’s photographs, Oakland Girls aestheticizes a dingy rooftop and a cloudy sky...