Andrew Beck: Artist's Talk at the Adam

By Kari Schmidt

Images by Bryar Clayton

All quotes by Andrew Beck, from his artist’s talk at the Adam Art Gallery (12/07/2015)

In his contribution to the Adam’s The Specious Present exhibition, Andrew Beck has used photograms to produce the works in his series After Image. Objects (alternately sheets of paper or glass panes) are placed directly onto photographic paper to produce an analogue photograph, without the aid of a camera. There is something quite poetic about the forms that Beck subsequently produces, which are combined with elements of painting and sculpture in his ‘drawing with light’ (the Greek root for the word 'photography’).

At the artist’s talk, Beck discussed the relationship of this work to the history of abstraction - an ostensibly logical link to make, given the visually austere nature of the work. However, the issue was raised that this link is more problematic when you consider the mixed-medium nature of his work and the fact that photography in a sense can’t be abstract - it is always representative of something in that it is created by a physical, tangible object from which light reflects. While Beck liked the notion of making a “small contribution to art history” in terms of the lineage of abstraction, he stated that he is also “interested in all mediums and how they connect and how you can bridge the gap between them, and what that can look like."

That the work has been created for the Adam is evident in the organic way in which it situates itself in the gallery. While not explicitly site-specific, Beck’s largest work, which spans one wall of the gallery, consists of a sequence wherein each subsequent piece of paper is a photogram of the last. Similarly, the work plays off the strip of light in the architecture to its right. Beck calls this a "sub-site specific work” - created in his studio and playing off the space, although not created explicitly within and in response to it.

Many of the works also have their own internal logic - the piece below consists of two pieces of photographic paper which are, in part, photograms of one another. In this way the work is “constructed, deconstructed and reconstructed” and references itself in “an attempt at becoming autonomous… like a snake eating its tail."

This is an example of how Beck wants the work to "pose questions as to what you’re looking at” - there’s a playfulness, an experimentation in form which unveils itself under a sustained looking. This is also reflected in the making of the work, which involved a degree of accident in Beck’s creating of the conditions to make it. Notably, Beck considers the process secondary, and is more occupied with other aspects of the work - this is especially interesting since understanding the process felt intuitively like the best way to get access to the work, and is indeed what Beck spent much of the time talking about. It is also in that process and the play of light onto chemical surface in a captured moment, that speaks to the 'time’ element of this exhibition within the context of The Specious Present as a whole.

In saying that, After Image also benefits from a prolonged examination of the final results. As you look at the work, catching your reflection in it as well as the other works in the suite, you get a sense of a cohesive whole which sits beautifully within the space - an exhibition that, while sparsely hung, is in no way empty.