I’m currently the Bemis Center working this is enormous studio! In Omaha from January through April.
PAVEMENTS, POTHOLES & REPAIRS is in the world!
Announcing my new book! This hybrid sculptural object and photography book documents my walks in Pittsburgh. These 498 photographs add up to a chunk of a thing you could use to fill your own pothole. Books can be ordered HERE!
Facebook Artist-In-Residence Program
In November I completed a new installation for the Facebook Artist-in-Residence program using hand-woven photographs of the ground and spray paint. More images can be seen here!
Yaddo!
I was awarded a month long residency at Yaddo in Saratoga Springs, New York from October through the beginning of November. I saw the leaves in full fall glory, made a heap of work, met wonderful artists and caught the first snowfall.
MacDowell Colony
I’m currently spending part of August and September in Peterborough, New Hampshire at the MacDowell Colony! I’m working on my upcoming artist’s book, Pavements, Potholes & Repairs, to be released by MAB Books in September and new paper weavings of the road.
MASS MoCA / Funded 2-Week Residency for College Arts Faculty
In early August, I spent 2 weeks in residence at the Studios at MASS MoCA working in a lovely studio on the MASS MoCA campus and meeting with artists from around the country to talk about teaching and making art!
Rock, Paper at Milton Art Bank, a solo show
A show that grew out of my daily walks with my dog, recorded through rubbings, photographs and prints, using rocks, ink, mud and rain. Rubbings of the road are printed and layered into thousands of Risograph prints, each one unique. Photographs of the road are woven together to create a new topography. I used found bricks from a demolished garage leave traces on paper, built up from rain and mud; a found rock was used to make prints, the rock itself becoming a thing on a pedestal, elevated like a Japanese suiseki rock to be appreciated for its aesthetic value. While works on paper are fragile, the rock is solid. The black ink on its surface another trace of an implied invisible action.
July 11-September 21st at Milton Art Bank
Catharine Clark Gallery, Don't Touch My Circles, a group exhibition
My cast potholes are included in this exhibition full of artists I admire. Don’t Touch My Circles including Kevin Cooley, Nicki Green, Bill Jacobson, Jana Sophia Nolle, Stephanie Syjuco, and Marie Watt.
June 29 – August 31, 2019
Opening reception: Saturday, June 29, 2019 from 2 – 4pm; artist talks at 3pm
San Francisco, CA: Catharine Clark Gallery opens Summer 2019 with Don’t Touch My Circles, a group exhibition of work across media by Kim Beck, Kevin Cooley, Nicki Green, Bill Jacobson, Jana Sophia Nolle, Stephanie Syjuco, and Marie Watt. The exhibition’s title references a quote attributed to Greek mathematician and astronomer Archimedes (287 – 212 BCE) who, upon confrontation with a Roman soldier during the conquest of Syracuse, pointed to geometric figures drawn in the sand and entreated Noli turbare circulos meos (“Do not disturb my circles”) before he was stabbed to death. While the authenticity of the quote is uncertain, the metaphors it invokes are especially salient in our political moment, as we consider how artists and creative practitioners stand up for their beliefs and ideas through their practice. In that vein, the works on view explore how familiar forms and motifs from art history – such as landscape and abstraction – can be invested with, and activated through, deep commitment to critique and political action.
Print in the Post-Print, Art Museum of the National Academy of Fine Arts, Hangzhou, China
I have a table of pothole photographs included in the 2nd International Printmaking Triennial, contemporary print exhibition. It includes artists Gary Hill, Kiki Smith, David Lynch and more!
Rice University & University of Houston
This week I’ll be in Houston! On November 6th, I will be a visiting artist and speaker at the University of Houston School of Art. Later in the week, on November 8th, I’ll be speaking and have project called “Field Recordings” at the Emergency Room Gallery at Rice University's Department of Visual and Dramatic Arts.
WANDERLUST: ACTIONS, TRACES, JOURNEYS 1967-2017
SEPTEMBER 7-DECEMBER 31, 2017
UB ART GALLERY, Curated by Rachel Adams
For Wanderlust: Actions, Traces, Journeys 1967-2017, I was commissioned to create a new skywriting piece over the Niagara River in Buffalo, photographs of which appear on 10 billboards around the city. The press release describes this as “a 50-year survey exhibition that considers the themes of action and exploration outside of the studio and how artists engage this theme in various ways, including walking, cartography, land use, endurance, and the consideration of public space. This exhibition highlights a variety of art practices, dating from the late 1960s and continuing through present day. Artists include Vito Acconci, Bas Jan Ader, Nevin Aladağ, Francis Alÿs, Janine Antoni, John Baldessari, Kim Beck, Roberley Bell, Blue Republic, Sophie Calle, Rosemarie Castoro, Cardiff/Miller, Millie Chen, Zoe Crosher, Fallen Fruit, David Hammons, Mona Hatoum, Nancy Holt, Kenneth Josephson, Allan Kaprow, William Lamson, Richard Long, Marie Lorenz, Mary Mattingly, Anthony McCall, Ana Mendieta, Teresa Murak, Wangechi Mutu, Efrat Natan, OHO, Gabriel Orozco, Carmen Papalia, John Pfahl, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Pope.L, Teri Rueb, Michael x. Ryan, Todd Shalom, Greg Stimac, Mary Ellen Strom, and Guido van der Werve.”
THERE HERE / Skywriting with UB Galleries!
My skywriting event There Here will take place on August 20 from 4-5PM! In There Here, a skywriter will draw arrows in the sky pointing to the US/Canadian border located over the Niagara River in Buffalo, New York. Commissioned as part of the exhibition Wanderlust: Actions, Traces, Journeys 1967-2017, you are invited to come take photographs and share them! They might appear on a billboard around town.
In the catalog, art historian Toby Lawrence writes, "Arrows are by definition directional. The series of skywritten arrows in Kim Beck’s work, There Here, is layered in significance and points of reference. Earlier iterations of Beck’s The Sky Is the Limit project reflect billboard and advertising language as well as highway exit signs, exploring the potential of signage to move bodies through space and the implications of this gesture. In Buffalo, the gesture is more direct. Sited within the city’s rich history and its position as a border town, the arrows rendered in the sky by a skywriting airplane draw attention to the physical and psychological space held by the border and relationships between the United States and Canada. Within, the arrows signify guidance and also allude to the history of Buffalo as the traditional lands of the Seneca people, as a migratory and economic gateway, and as a site of resistance and revolution through significant markers of history, such as the War of 1812 and the Underground Railroad that provided access to freedom for Black slaves into Canada."
North Dakota Museum of Art
Into the Weeds, August 13 - October 15, 2017
A Great Piece of Turf, graphite on paper, 78 1/4 x 109 inches,2014
Home Economics at The Woskob Family Gallery, Penn State University
Opens June 29 through August 12, 2017
Kim Beck, Income / Outcome, Door mats, 2017
Curated by Haley Finnegan
In this show, artists engage our understandings of home, what it means to belong, and the intricacies of domestic relationships, I have included 2 pairs of custom doormats with the words: INCOME/OUTCOME & MINE/YOURS. The show includes artists are Natalie Baxter, Kim Beck, Laurent Chéhère, David Cuatlacuatl, Rachel Farbiarz, Adia Millett, Danielle Mužina, Nick Naber, Hillel O’Leary, and Polly Shindler.
http://woskobfamilygallery.psu.edu/2017/04/13/home-economics/
Montalvo Arts Center / Solo Show of Animation & Drawing
I wish I knew what to say
Kim Beck: Solo Show at Project Space, Montalvo Arts Center
Friday, April 7, 2017 - Thursday, June 8, 2017
Kim Beck is a Fellow at the Lucas Artist Program (LAP) at Montalvo Arts Center. The works on view in this exhibition were created by the artist during a three month residency at the LAP this spring. Kim Beck’s new animations and works on paper are based on experiences of external and internal landscapes, the limits of representation and language, and the process of drawing as a metaphor for change.
Several of the works on paper are based on found photographs of a California landscape. The repetition of the photographic image in her drawings invites the viewer to reconsider our traditional understanding of photography as a reproducible medium and drawing, conversely, as a unique and singular mode of art making. The anonymity of the original photographer and site together also convey a sense of the mystery of place. Another set of works on paper are based on the artist’s hikes through the woods and mountains, pair text with color swatches based on the artist’s walks around Montalvo’s grounds. Annotated like informal diary entries, these works capture the experience of walking through a particular place at a particular time, like a mental and experiential snapshot.
These works are followed bya larger series of graphite drawings and animations. Beck made these stop-frame animations by drawing and erasing, photographing them each step of the way. Like palimpsests revealing traces of the previous gestures, the drawings are as much the residue of Beck’s animations as their starting point. As Beck says of the work:
“These animations reflect the experience of being alive – the cycle of gestures, choices and actions countered by loss and change. The phrases written on some of the drawings, such as “I wish I knew what to say” and “There are no words” are a response to feeling at a loss for language: this last year my mother died, and then on top of that unspeakable experience, the country catastrophically lost the election. These losses have made language almost impossible. These drawings are on the edge of where written language and gesture meet, where a scribble might become a written word. As Samuel Beckett writes in his play The Unnamable: “You must go on. / I can't go on. / I'll go on.”
Kim Beck grew up outside of Denver, Colorado and now lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania where she teaches art at Carnegie Mellon University. Her drawings, prints and installations have been shown at the Walker Art Center, the Carnegie Museum of Art, Socrates Sculpture Park, the Warhol Museum, the Indianapolis Museum of Art, the Minneapolis Museum of Art, the Philbrook Museum of Art and along the High Line in New York City, among other venues.
http://montalvoarts.org/exhibitions/i_wish_i_knew_what_to_say/
2017 WINTER
ECOTHEO
"When it comes to the work of Kim Beck, expect to be fully enveloped by the environments she creates, through the power of her imagery and the very real spaces she forms. Worlds are drawn, sculpted, printed, installed, and even scattered outdoors. This artist utilizes a variety of mediums to allow herself and viewers to encounter our seemingly mundane surroundings with a fresh perspective."
I-70 Sign Show in Public Art Dialogue
Volume 6, 2016, I-70 Sign Show / by Anne Thompson, Pages 273-279 | Published: 09 Nov 2016
EXCERPT from Curator's Statement:
"Drivers crossing America on Interstate 70 find that the scenery shifts in Missouri. Billboards dominate the landscape. Most signs advertise travel amenities — food, motels and fuel. Many are blank. Others seem to conduct a heated, if inadvertent, culture-war debate: “red” versus “blue,” Christian values versus pleasure and vice. Warnings that hell is real, abortions stop beating hearts, and gambling destroys the family battle ads for porn venues and casinos. My goal in launching the “I-70 Sign Show” was to infiltrate this polarized terrain with artworks that function as playful commentary. I invite artists whose projects engage language, signage or pop culture in ways that could reflect themes prevalent along the 250 miles between St. Louis and Kansas City — religion, sex, gender, guns, labor, athletics, leisure and commerce. The project started in April 2014 with Kay Rosen and continued with Mel Bochner, Mickalene Thomas, Kim Beck, Ken Lum, Karl Haendel, Ryan McGinness, Marilyn Minter, Jeff Gibson, Eric Oglander and Ed Ruscha. The “Sign Show” does not explicitly label its billboards as artworks. By inserting something perplexing into a numbing message barrage, the project invites a vehicle based audience to reconsider a banal scene with curiosity."
Projects by Kay Rosen, Mel Bochner, Mickalene Thomas, Kim Beck, Ken Lum, Karl Haendel, Ryan McGinness, Marilyn Minter, Jeff Gibson, Eric Oglander and Ed Ruscha as well as everyday signage.
NASTY WOMEN NYC ART EXHIBITION
When: Exhibition Runs January 12 -15, 2017
Where: The Knockdown Center, Maspeth, Queens, NYC
Opening: Thursday, January 12 7-10PM
The Stephen & George Laundry Line
Barrier @ The Stephen and George Laundry Line / Ridgewood, Queens, NYC
In this new installation titled: Barrier, bright orange safety fencing is wrapped around the laundry line, suggesting security and construction activities in the usual place of laundry. Here however the fencing is no longer functional. Instead this subtly transformed readymade material seems to have floated up off the street, allowing us to consider it as either a fence dividing space or as a layered abstraction. Overlapping grids of orange and silver morph into a painting of sorts forming a disorienting moiré pattern. Over the course of the installation, the weather will rip and tear at the grid, gradually changing piece and further pointing to it’s failure as a fence.
Swarm, Relief print on paper, 2016
SWARM @ MAPC!
Signs & Signifiers
Opens October 7, 2016
Mid America Print Council
McGrath Gallery
Bellarmine University
Louisville, KY