In show at Portland Art Museum, John Beech finds substance among the scrap
June 30, 2011
Turning the abundant refuse of the everyday into art is nothing new, but British-born, New York-based artist John Beech continues to find exhilarating possibility in the discarded. At the Portland Art Museum,
the artist offers a pair of large-scale, black-and-white photographs of
a Dumpster in an urban alley, like some kind of Pandora's Box waiting
to be opened.
In "Reutlingen Factory Yard #1," 2010, Beech
painstakingly conceals the Dumpster in silver metallic tape, but, in
its counterpart, "Reutlingen Factory Yard #2," 2010, the tape
crisscrosses the image like it's holding it together. It's the picture
plane as smashed car window: You can still see through it, but barely.
A
pair of enormous sculptures -- a tilting orange cube and an open dray
on wheels -- are severe, battered structures whose materials could have
been salvaged from an alley.
A show of Beech's smaller work, on display at Elizabeth Leach Gallery (417 N.W. Ninth Ave.; elizabethleach.com)
through July 16, distills these big statements into compact packages,
especially in a series of transparent Plexiglas cubes stuffed with
debris and spattered with paint. Rather than apply the materials of
painting to a canvas, Beech crams them in a box and hangs it on the
wall. Apparently, alchemy's a messy business.
10 a.m. to 5
p.m. Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Saturdays; 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Thursdays
and Fridays; Noon to 5 p.m. Sundays; through Oct. 16; Portland Art
Museum, 1219 S.W. Park Ave., 503-226-2811; $12, portlandartmuseum.org
-- John Motley
