Walead Beshty
Born in 1976 in London. He lives and works in Los Angeles.
Walead Beshty's experiments with the very material of the photographic medium, taking up the legacy of a Man Ray or a Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, but he then proposes a representation of these experiments, the result of which he photographs in large paintings. The artist also pursues this research through sculpture, exhibiting packages smashed in the course of their successive expeditions, thus revealing the result of activities that are usually relegated to the backstage of art production and exhibition.
Sculpture or photography, Walead Beshty's pieces often display the same motifs. While utterly different for each work of art, the production process involves either a diffraction of the image or object, or a fragmentation of their surface. Whether the piece is posited on the exposure of light -sensitive paper or, in the case of his sculptures, the trip they make via FedEx, Beshty is engaged in a reflection on time, which his works carry over to the public.
Walead Beshty graduated from Bard College and Yale University School of Art in 1999 and 2002. He is an Associate Professor in the Graduate Department of Art at the Art Center College of Design, Pasadena, and has taught at numerous schools, including the Universities of California, Los Angeles and Irvine; the California Institute of the Arts; the Art Institute, Chicago, and the MFA Program at Bard College.