Blades of Grass and Linen Fences: Kim Beck’s Home Turf at Mixed Greens
A Great Piece of
Turf, a watercolor created in 1503 by
renowned draughtsman Albrecht
Dürer, is the inspiration behind the title of
Pittsburgh-based artist Kim Beck’s current exhibition at Mixed Greens. Dürer continues to reign as one of history’s preeminent
conjurers, celebrated for evoking entire worlds through a modest sequence of
cross-hatched lines, and Beck applies a similarly meticulous focus to her
graphic compositions. Her sculptures and works on paper explore with
near-scientific intensity the bonafide minutia of quotidian existence, framing
the microcosm of her own life—in this case, the idea of “turf,” both physical
and abstract—as a lens through which to investigate universal human concerns.
As an
introduction to the show, Beck presents a series of draped chain-link fences
made from swaths of hand-cut, primed linen. Their modulations of surface,
color, and texture—visual qualities that delineate contour and thereby
designate space—are uneven and inconsistent, offering an ocular impression of
boundaries that are fluid rather than fixed. Considered metaphorically, they
suggest a meditation on contemporary global culture that is increasingly
hybridized and homogenous, as intimations of privacy are dispelled by systemic
surveillance, and distinctions among cultures are supplanted by an
all-consuming capitalism. The very field of painting, itself, has not been
spared: it, too, is increasingly subjected to infiltration by other mediums.
In other
works on view, the artist mobilizes the motif of a chunk of land—a “piece of
turf”—as a symbol for territory. A large-scale graphite drawing of a plot of
grass Beck discovered in her own backyard, minutely observed, elevates to
historic proportions a mundane natural element found in any domestic landscape;
but this particular piece of turf is hers, and hers alone: it exists as an
concrete aspect of and witness to her daily rhythms and rituals. By offering
viewers, quite literally, a small sample of her personal territory, she evokes
the shared space of artistic and cultural exchange, and insinuates the way art
often takes seed from the simplest of observations.
“A Great Piece of Turf” is on view at Mixed Greens, New York, Apr. 24th–May 23rd, 2014.
