FedEx® Large Kraft Boxes
laminated Mirropane, FedEx shipping box, accrued FedEx tracking and shipping labels, silicone, metal, and shipping tape, 24 x 24 x 24 inches
exhibition view at Malmö Konsthall, February – May 2011
photo: HELENE TORESDOTTER

–

FedEx® Large Box, Priority Overnight, LA – NY (Tracking No. 799801787471)
Clear glass with safety glass laminate, silicon, cardboard, 3 x 12 x 18 inches

–

exhibition view at Malmö Konsthall, February – May 2011
photo: HELENE TORESDOTTER

–

Three Color Curl (CMY/Four Magnet: Irvine, California, January 1st 2010, Fujicolor Crystal Archive Super Type C, Em. No. 165-021, 01110, 2010
Color photographic paper

–

Walead Beshty: Selected Correspondences 2001-2009
published by Damiani in 2010, available here

–

(RMCY), 2007
photogram Courtesy of Wallspace Gallery

–

Transparency (Negative) [Kodak NC Color Film: May 8 – May 18, 2008
ORD/LHR LHR/IAD IAD/JFK LGA/DCA DCA/ORD], 2009
Epson Ultrachrome K3 archival ink jet print on Museo Silver Rag Paper

–

Copper Surrogate (Table: designed by Florence Knoll, 1969; Regen Projects II, Los Angeles, California, July 17–August 21, 2010), 2010
Polished copper table top and powder-coat steel

–

FedEx® Large Kraft Box ©2005 FEDEX 330508 REV 10/05 SSCC, International Priority, Los Angeles–Brussels trk#865282057953, October 27–30, 2008, International Priority, Brussels–Los Angeles trk#866071746385, December 8–9, 2008, 2008–
Laminated glass, FedEx shipping box, accrued FedEx shipping and tracking labels, silicone, metal, tape

–

WALEAD BESHTY for Dot Dot Dot #17, 2008
courtesy of Dexter Sinister

–

WALEAD BESHTY is an artist whose photographic and sculptural works turn on questions of the transitory nature of daily life, its gaps, its pauses, and its moments of in-betweenness. More recently, this engagement with the in-between has grown into a means of production, making use of procedures as air travel or sending a package, activities that usually recede into the background of an artist’s productive life.

One of the various ongoing series in WALEAD BESHTY‘s work consists of glass cubes which are shipped from exhibition venue to exhibition venue and inevitably but unforeseeably are damaged en route by their handling. The final artwork, an unofficial collaboration with FedEx, is the semishattered cube displayed alongside souvenirs from its formative journey — the cardboard shipping crates use as ready-made pedestals.

He is also known for his series of photograms (2006-ongoing): BESHTY revises this historical technique by enlarging the scale of his photograms and making use of more contemporary technologies, such as color processors. In addition, rather than placing objects on photographic paper, he folds or curls the paper before exposing it repeatedly to light, creating interlocking facets of prismatic color.

I try to avoid the term “abstraction”; it really doesn’t describe my work.(…) Instead I tend to favour the term “concrete”, or “literalist”, because it’s less misleading in the case of my work. My work is not “about” something outside of it –the performance of making the thing is absolutely banal, stupid – rather my interest is in the thing that’s right in front of you. I never think of it as a sign for something else, and I initially began doing this type of work in an attempt to make a non-abstract photograph, one that refused the over-emphasis on representation. Really, the work is not about some missing occurrence or object withheld from view, like conventional representation. – WALEAD BESHTY in conversation with MIKKEL CARL