Lisa Beck
“Looking Through”
May 24 – June 30
Opening Thursday 24 May 19-21h.
We are extremely pleased to present the first European solo exhibition by Lisa Beck, titled “Looking Through” from 24 May to 30 June. The exhibition will include paintings and installation works installed in an environment mediated through wall paintings.
In a Lisa Beck exhibition, paintings double themselves, a room is reflected, compressed and inverted into a small sphere, wall paintings link illusionary space with real space.
In 2010 Lisa Beck was included in our exhibition “Pull My Daisy,” and was invited by Lisa Ruyter to make a project with Olivier Mosset at Bell Street Project Space in Vienna, known for having a large mirrored wall. The mirrored surface has since become a greater part of the artist’s language, the materiality reflecting, both literally and metaphorically, core interests at the heart of her practice.
Lisa Beck writes:
“Transparency and reflection are the visual qualities that link all the works ‘Looking Through’. Patterning through repetition and an exploration of the pictorial suggestiveness of material and abstraction come into play as well. The way the reflective surface brings its environment into the work is of primary interest to me, as well as the illusion of depth it lends to the flat surface. The smoothness of the glass allows the diluted paint to pool and separate in ways that are both allusive and formally focused. This serves my concurrent interests in the materiality of the art object and its metaphorical references to space, landscape and mood.”
Visual awareness and perception are a bridge between us and the world we live in. There’s everything and there’s us, and although we’re part of – inside – everything, we also stand apart – outside – as we perceive, analyze, and interpret it. Encouraging pure acts of observation and heightened visual awareness with these works, I want to look at seeing…I’m interested in optical illusions and other visual effects, and am interested in how they inform the innate desire we have for order, the stories we tell ourselves about what makes sense in our experience. Symmetry, repetition and pattern are some of the ways we make sense, make order from chaos. And maybe it doesn’t matter if we fool ourselves with this illusion that things match up and dance together in an orderly fashion. Because maybe there really is order beneath the chaos. Or not.”
A catalog “yes, no, something, nothing, never, always” includes selected works by Lisa Beck and an interview with Bob Nickas has just been published by Feature Inc.
Lisa Beck lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. She graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design with a BFA in film. Her artworks are created in a variety of mediums including painting, sculpture and installation, often in combination. Her work has been exhibited in the United States and internationally since 1989 in galleries and other venues including Feature Inc, New York; Paula Cooper Gallery, New York; de Pury & Luxemburg, Zurich; Le Magasin, Grenoble; La Salle des Bains, Lyon; PS1, Long Island City; CCNOA, Brussels; White Columns, New York. She has just been awarded a residency with the Marie Walsh Sharpe Foundation Space Program.
