Walead Beshty

Picture Made by my Hand with the Assistance of Light  2007

Black and white photogram on gelatin silver paper

67.3 x 41.9 in.

Walead Beshty incorporates his penchant for travel and interest in current affairs in the underlying motive for his works. The London born artist, after completing a Master of Fine Arts degree at Yale University, has consequently debuted his work in New York. Choosing photography as his practice of choice, he pushes the possibilities of the medium to the limit: taking advantage of its immediacy and impact to reflect his theory in salient material form. 

Beshty’s works have featured in multiple notable collections including The Art Institute of Chicago, the Guggenheim, LACMA, MoMA, SFMOMA, The Whitney, and the V&A. As the subject of numerous exhibitions, including solo shows at the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing, the Hirshhorn Museum and the Hammer Museum of Art in Los Angeles as well as in group exhibitions at institutions such as the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Tate Britain, the artist’s curriculum vitae is outstanding. His international status continues to expand, appearing at venues such as the Barbican Centre in London and at Capitain Petzel in Berlin earlier this year.

The artist’s innovative practice challenges the typical classification of the photographer. Despite describing himself as such, the artist’s practice is more concerned with film as a catalyst rather than medium; beginning with a black backdrop and shaping the subsequent image with the spontaneity of chance and circumstance. Largely considered to pertain to the abstract movement, he rather pursues the concept of artwork as purveyor of possibility, ‘insisting instead on their material inscription of the structural conditions and possibilities of the medium’. The underlying qualities of photography, such as the potential for reproduction and infiltration, allow for the medium to be used as a means to represent the conditions of contemporary material culture.