Untitled (filament)

Kevin BeasleyWW-2016-133408

2016·Kaftans in resin·139.7 × 111.8 × 101.6 cm (55 × 44 × 40 in.)

Kevin Beasley, who also works in sound and performance, assembles his sculptures from liquid polyurethane foam or resin and items of clothing—sometimes his own, and more recently, house dresses and kaftans sourced from the same store his grandmothers shopped in. While Untitled (filament) is obviously hollow, it does not seem lifeless or uninhabited. Each empty, draped element is like a life-size ghost, though the individual shapes as well as their circling array suggest oversize bodily and organic forms, too, from the phallic to the floral. The resulting sculpture is at once formidable and fragile, as if an apparition.

Catalogue

Year: 2016
Medium: Kaftans in resin
Dimensions: 139.7 × 111.8 × 101.6 cm (55 × 44 × 40 in.)
Collection: Art Institute of Chicago
Artist: Kevin Beasley

Artist

Kevin Beasley

Installation

Kevin Beasley (b. 1985, Lynchburg, VA) lives and works in New York. His practice spans sculpture, photography, sound, and performance, while centering on materials of cultural and personal significance, from raw cotton harvested from his family’s property in Virginia to sounds gathered using contact microphones. Beasley alters, casts, and molds these diverse materials to form a body of works that acknowledge the complex, shared histories of the broader American experience, steeped in generational memories. A selection of recent exhibitions and performances include Prospect.5, New Orleans (2021), in which Beasley realized a multiyear site-specific project in the Lower Ninth Ward; a series of outdoor performances for the Performa 2021 Biennial, New York; The Dirty South: Contemporary Art, Material Culture, and the Sonic Impulse, at Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (2021); Grief and Grievance: Art and Mourning in America at New Museum, New York (2021); a month-long residency and solo exhibition at A4 Arts Foundation, Cape Town, South Africa (2020); and ASSEMBLY, co-organized by Kevin Beasley, Lumi Tan, Tim Griffin, and Nicole Kaack at The Kitchen, New York (2019). In 2018-2019, Beasley tr

Lynchburg, VA, USA

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