Walead Beshty

Jeff recommended artist Walead Beshty after my crit on Thursday so I decided to look into him. The photographs that drew me in the most were a series of work where he photographed an abandoned Iraqi embassy. When he was returning form one of the trips to Iraq he accidentally put his film through the x-ray machine with out any protective case on it. Apparently he was about to throw it away but decided to get it processed anyway to see how the rays effected it. He was so pleased with the results that it became the central theme of his very large wall sized prints. The x-rays became a symbol for crossing an international border as well as serving as a great ascetic plus.




The color, cropping and composition all remind me of what I have been working on. The idea of the process mirroring the concept is really interesting to me and it is something that I am going to look into. Beshty also included a partner piece to go with the x-ray images in sculpture form. He made bullet proof glass boxes the size of fedex boxes, then put them into actual fedex boxes and had has them shipped between shows. The result is that the boxes get damaged with every move and show their travel through their wear. It seems like incorporating sculpture with photography is a new trend emerging now in modern work. Being able to have both 2d and 3d work in the same space that have the same general concept and meaning is a challenging thing to achecve, and I think he pulls it off quite well.