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14/3/2012

John Beech

Galerie Les Filles-du-Calvaire, Paris

We are pleased to announce the first solo exhibition in France by Anglo-American artist John Beech. This event has developed over time and its foundations were laid during ‘Glissements de Terrain’ (Landslides) in 2009 and Minimal Pop in 2007. These two group exhibitions, in which a selection of the artist’s works was shown, took stock of the diversity of practice within the field of contemporary abstract art. These shows were also part of a pictorial approach programme that the gallery has dedicated a lot of time towards since it was first created. John Beech is one of those fascinating artists whose multi-faceted and ever- changing forms of expression are uncommon and destabilising. His work shatters the fundamental concepts and categorical boundaries of abstract art. The artist’s stance has been influenced as much by the dialectics of Marcel Duchamp as by those of Andy Warhol. The resulting works combine problems of size and space with ones of pictorial surface and yet remain firmly embedded in the banality of subjects and materials.

From England originally, it was in the United States that John Beech studied and developed as an artist and he must certainly have been immersed in minimalism and pop culture from as early as the 1970s. However, this artist has not forgotten his origins or his connection with representational culture. He has thrived on both European and American movements alike. As such, remarkably, unlike most other contemporary artists, he doesn’t ignore his roots. On the contrary, he applies them in his practice, by mixing them together and using them in a clashing way. He overthrows the very notions that generated them.

John Beech likes to use industrial materials because of their intrinsic properties. There is an initial antagonism which plays on artistic experimentation and the birth of form. The rustic character of his work is displayed through the use of raw materials and a vocabulary inspired by minimalism. Similarly, John Beech applies areas of monochrome colour onto monumental photographs of skips or containers or he streaks their surface with large coloured bands. In doing so the image is totally revamped. In coated drawings, he is successful in making abstract spring out of photographic images that are embedded in the harshest of realities. In the same move, abstract space is dislodged and minimal plasticity is expressed through big tinted areas which have been affixed to geometrical bulks. Vision is controlled by colour which invades reality like a plastic language. It is a sort of plastic Spoonerism that bends the direction of the picture or the material by perfecting the art of radical interpretation. And yet all trivia is removed from these collections, because the formal depiction conveyed by the artist, through his objects, sculptures, photographs or silkscreen prints, ends up being very far removed from the original form.

Here, official terminology is instantly obsolete. Sculptural surfaces overlap into the genre of painting and paintings become volumes. 'Drawings' start to belong to the genre of painting (because of the areas of colour), collage (because of the superimposition of strips) and photography (because of the background of the works). Space is constantly being disturbed by the forms displayed in the pictures or the painted subjects, and by volumes which are both sculptural and representational, and are balanced by the artist in the exhibition space. John Beech's art is disjunctive and functional at the same time. He dismisses the primary use of materials or industrial forms; instead he uses fictitious approaches and plastic determinism by reversing Duchampian diversion. ‘Rotating paintings’, his collection of sculptures, or rather, painted subjects are a good example of this. Surfaces painted onto raw pieces of chopped wood are able to rotate because they have been fitted absurdly with wheels or axes. It is obviously not a coincidence that ‘rotating paintings’ has been so closely named to mentor Duchamp’s roto reliefs, even though the former is far removed from the kinetic dynamics of the latter.

Historical continuity doesn’t stop there by any means. Once the work of John Beech has been analysed, as Gabriel Kübler notes (2): ‘we have a reference list in the back of our heads and, whether we like it or not, we notice something dada, surrealist, new realist, pop art, minimal, Arte povera, or radical painting. Modern era has won the battle after a century of perpetual and vibrant avant-garde. Readymades, complex paradoxes, accumulations, simple geometrical shapes, ordinary materials and space dynamics are all recurring themes in John Beech’s art. He confidently acknowledges this heritage and he mixes just the right amount of references and innovation, and he challenges our memory and sense of perception.'

Between Duchamp and Pop art, Beech delivers a ‘minimal trash’ version of abstract art. He brings form back to life by building it up from banality. In a strictly abstract fashion and contrasting with the generally ‘clean & glossy’ nature of minimal art, he delivers ‘hardware’ works embedded in raw reality. As Markus Verhagen points out in Modern Painters in 2005 ‘Works are animated by an inherent contradiction. They make use of conceptual flaws which enable the artist to legitimately qualify them as pieces of art even though, the irony of his actions simultaneously reflect the fallibility of that very status.’

The functionality of subjects in John Beech’s work is altered and he takes great pleasure in blurring perceptions, by offering different outlooks and by challenging Cartesian tendencies of ever wanting to classify things. The artist experiments with reality. He uses that living matter as a thread to test the conceptual development preventing him from being categorically constrained. By contingency, he has generated an approach that never stops questioning the use and pleasure of art. Even though Beech is not a politician, he successfully informs about meaning and function without any obscenity or vain sophistication. The mind is free to move and evolve without being trapped in religion or worship.

However, John Beech’s impertinence towards minimalism is still marked by basic stringency. Yet, instead of being heavy, this insolence becomes poetic thanks to the ironic and ambiguous way the artist operates. The elegance of his moves and the dialectical relationship between function and dysfunction emphasise the unwarranted nature of art.

By Christine Ollier
Translated by Demelza Desforges

Opening on March 15th from 6pm to 21pm

Galerie Les Filles-du-Calvaire
17 rue des Filles-du-Calvaire, Paris
Open from Tuesday to Saturday, 11am to 6:30pm
Admission free

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