Walead Beshty
Bookkeeping [Source: wood, laminate, and particleboard bookkeeping desk designed by Project-Space/Jonathan Caplan from the bookkeeping office at Friedrich Petzel Gallery, New York. Surrogate: WB72614A...
Lot Closed
October 3, 09:40 PM GMT
Estimate
10,000 - 15,000 USD
Lot Details
Description
Walead Beshty
b. 1976
Bookkeeping [Source: wood, laminate, and particleboard bookkeeping desk designed by Project-Space/Jonathan Caplan from the bookkeeping office at Friedrich Petzel Gallery, New York. Surrogate: WB72614A (produced in conjunction with Beverly Banks and Cecilia Roberts, Bookkeepers), Copper Surrogate (designed by Project-Space/Jonathan Caplan, 456 West 18th Street, New York, New York, June 26–October 4, 2014), conceived in 2013, produced in 2014, made of polished copper and powder-coated steel with the dimensions 68 5/8 x 125 1/8 x 30 3/4 inches as a singular object. Production completed by Benchmark Scenery Incorporated, Glendale, California from 48 ounce Electrolytic-Tough-Pitch C11000 Copper Alloy cut from 60 x 120 inch mirror-polished sheet and 24 ounce Electrolytic-Tough-Pitch C11000 Copper Alloy cut from 60 x 120 inch mirror-polished sheet, with formed corners where necessary, copper plated hardware, perimeter edge French cleat system, and separate black powder-coated steel support structures. $21,080.00 production cost including travel and storage crates with floating lockable cleat system. Unexposed surrogates shipped by Crate 88 Incorporated from Los Angeles to New York, June 19 through June 23, 2014. Installed in place of Project-Space/Jonathan Caplan desk at 456 West 18th Street, New York on June 26, 2014, exposure through the duration of A Machinery for Living organized by Walead Beshty and Walead Beshty: Performances Under Working Conditions at Friedrich Petzel Gallery, New York, closing October 4, 2014. Due to the length and shape of the surface, copper surrogate portion produced in two sections, section 1 is 80 3/4 x 23 3/8 x 1 1/2 inches and section 2 is 67 x 44 3/16 x 1 1/2 inches. Desk has two cabinet surrogates with the dimensions 29 1/4 x 15 1/4 x 21 3/4 inches and four small drawer surrogates, each with the dimensions 3 1/8 x 21 3/4 x 21 3/4 inches.]
polished copper table top and powder-coated steel, in 8 parts
i. 81 by 23½ in. (205.7 by 59.7 cm.)
ii. 67 by 44¼ in. (170.2 by 112.4 cm.)
iii-vi. 4 drawers: 3⅛ by 22 by 22 in. (7.9 by 55.9 by 55.9 cm.)
vii-viii. 2 cabinets: 29¼ by 15¼ by 21¾ in. (74.3 by 38.7 by 55.2 cm.)
Executed in 2014.
Petzel Gallery, New York
Acquired from the above by the present owner
New York, Petzel Gallery, Performances Under Working Conditions, September - October 2014
Procedurals: Petzel 2014–2017, New York 2017, p. 42, illustrated in color
Walead Beshty looks past the examination of simply medium. Whereas the historical readymade artists, like Marcel Duchamp, examined what qualifies something as an artistic medium, Besthy examines an artistic medium out of isolation. While the traditional readymade artists disrupted what is considered art, Beshty disrupts what is appropriate interaction with the piece. Beginning with his series of Fedex glass works, the artist displaces seemingly shatterproof glass boxes, shaped to fit in a unique Fedex shipping box, yet only allows the art to be transported by Fedex. While artists constantly seek to isolate their work from change, Beshty acknowledges the systems that are involved in shipping, handling, and installing a work. The glass within the box might crack in transit, yet it is essential to his practice that one’s perception of his work is constantly changing. As the Fedex glass box continually changes in transit, Beshty explored the interaction of labor with material components in his series of copper monolith works. In these works, he explores the oxidation patterns left by human touch on the copper and encourages the raw interaction. Aptly articulated when reviewing Walead Beshty’s show, Open Source, in 2017 at Petzel Gallery, ArtForum critic, Jeffrey Kastner, wrote on his copper series:
“This new work contains a record of the labor involved with its own realization, and here the prising gleaming surfaces of the individual pieces - which are meant to be installed bare-handed- have already been “marred” by the finger - and the handprints of the installers who unpacked and positioned them. It’s in such infrathin zones of interaction that Besthy’s insistent explorations of the ever-present yet uneasy symbiosis between bodies and artifacts, between human and machine - continuously marked by one another - are most persuasively conducted.”
You May Also Like
