Macro to Micro: Looking at Kim Beck’s Excavations
Almost exactly one year ago at Teotihuacan, the pyramids located a few hours outside of Mexico City, I photographed Kim Beck creating a rubbing of the sign for true north on the Avenue of the Dead located at the heart of the complex. I observed her throughout the day as she investigated the site, placing paper down and creating rubbings from the rocks that made up the walls of the buildings and others that made the pathways through the city. Their textures exemplified the place, its locality, and its layered history. Seeing these textures appear on the paper is almost like experiencing magic…it transported me into Beck’s process in a way that placed me as an audience of one for these semi-private performances. Catching Beck at this pivotal point–where her process is so much about capturing information laid/placed beneath our feet–led me even deeper into her practice. It jolted me back to when I first was introduced to Beck’s work, when she lectured at the University at Buffalo. Immediately, I was drawn into her world, one that looks simultaneously at the macro and the micro that she admires, investigates and replicates in her practice[1]. She places emphasis on the ecology of the everyday, citing her journeys through a blend of photography, printmaking, and weaving, all wrapped together through these performative gestures that spur the making. Through her investigation into the intersections of environments–both natural and built–she entrusts both the ground and the sky to act as collaborators in her visual actions.
In Pitch, on view at Dimensions Variable, she conflates human made surfaces in a series of weavings, photographs, sculptures and a flag. This color-punctuated exhibition has no auditory soundtrack, yet there is an ongoing vibration. Weavings of various sizes and color palettes have a repeating effect, while they call out to both oil spills and abstract expressionism. Rubbings from the streets are folded into fake rocks, while neon-spray painted rubble punctuates the gallery, becoming colorful notes within the vibrating score. Beck leans into the shifting road, the shifts in our world that occur through human and natural interventions. She notices the marks leftover, the compacted surfaces that pepper cities and weave layers of histories that she then adds to by excavating them from their “place” and creating additional layers through her artistic processes.
In her crayon rubbings of asphalt on raw linen and spray-painted stone silhouettes, Beck invites viewers to contemplate places that are often overlooked in our everyday life. While these places are yet often indistinguishable, Beck intends on highlighting what helps shape our landscape. Through her process, she reveals uncanny and abstract intersections between form and content. The work in Pitch engages with notions of place subtly, yet serves as poignant reflections of Beck’s deeply introspective methodology. Layers of time form around layers that we, as inhabitants, have put down. Both manmade and natural, these layers intertwine in her practice, expanding how we see the expanse of time and space visually through color, form, and the merging of these unidentified, yet complex surfaces.
Beck’s work is often an examination of mark making. Sometimes they are intentional marks, made by the artist or the builder or construction worker or sometimes they are not intentional, made by nature itself and translated through Beck’s multi-dimensional practice of seeing, capturing and replacing. Her weavings connect while her recreations of boulders/rocks are fabricated surfaces of reality and her cyanotypes are three into two-dimensional archives of her journeys. In her large weavings, she skillfully juxtaposes the slow passage of time against the immediacy of marks on their surface. Important to mention, is her color palette. Culling from the colors construction crews use for “marking” areas, Beck pulls in neon pinks, oranges, yellows and greens. Beck’s use of neon colors can also be seen as a commentary on visibility and erasure. The bright, eye-catching hues demand attention. Yet, just as these street markings are eventually worn away or paved over, Beck’s neon accents also suggest the inevitable erasure of these interventions, raising questions about what is remembered and what is forgotten.
In this way, her work poignantly reflects on themes of memory, impermanence, and the enduring impact of human actions on the environment. Through intentional imperfections and a rich interplay of color and texture, Beck crafts intricate tapestries that speak volumes about the complexity of merging surfaces and the transient nature of our surroundings.
In Beck’s hands, her work becomes a metaphor for the interconnectedness of all things. She challenges conventional notions of place and representation while deftly juxtaposing the gradual passage of time with the immediate impressions left upon the surfaces she (re)configures. Through her varied practice, Beck invites viewers to contemplate the transient nature of existence and the enduring beauty that lies beneath/on/above the surface of our everyday lives.
[1] After meeting Beck, I commissioned her in 2017 to create a work for the exhibition I was curating titled Wanderlust: Actions, Traces, Journeys 1967-2017. That work, titled There Here, was a documented skywriting performance which consisted of arrows drawn in the sky above the Niagara River, pointing back and forth between Canada and the United States. In thinking through the new work in Pitch, I have been reflecting back on There Here, about how place plays such a central role in Beck’s work. There Here was about a specific area that engaged with layers of history that Beck wove together–both literally or conceptually.
Rachel Adams
Rachel Adams is the Chief Curator and Director of Programs at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts. Her varied areas of interest focus on creating meaningful connections for artists. Exhibitions tend to highlight singular artistic practices as well as group thematic exhibitions relating to current socio-political issues through many artistic mediums, including installation, painting, ceramics and sculpture, sound, performance, video and new media practices. Past curatorial appointments include Senior Curator at UB Art Galleries, Curator-in-Residence at Disjecta Contemporary Art Center (now Oregon Contemporary) and Associate Curator at Arthouse at the Jones Center (now The Contemporary Austin). Adams holds an MA in Exhibition and Museum Studies from SFAI and a BFA from SAIC. Select exhibitions include Paul Stephen Benjamin: Black of Night, Raven Halfmoon: Flags of Our Mothers (co-curated, catalogue), Jennifer Ling Datchuk: Eat Bitterness, Presence in the Pause: Interiority and its Radical Immanence, Maya Dunietz: Root of Two (catalogue), All Together, Amongst Many: Reflections on Empathy, Paul Mpagi Sepuya: Drop Scene, Claudia Wieser: Generations (co-curated, catalogue), Alison O’Daniel: Heavy Air, Jillian Mayer: TIMESHARE (catalogue), The Language of Objects, Wanderlust: Actions, Traces, Journeys 1967-2017 (catalogue) and Introducing Tony Conrad: A Retrospective (co-curated, catalogue). Forthcoming projects include exhibitions with Carmen Winant, Miatta Kawinzi and the group exhibition From the Great Lakes to the Great Plains: The Visible Current of Climate Change.
