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Walead Beshty 20-inch Copper (FedEx® Large Kraft Box© 2005 FEDEX 330508) International Priority, Los Angeles–London trk#8685 8772 8040, date October 2–6, 2009. International Priority London–New York trk#863822956489, date November 18–20, 2009, International Priority New York–London trk#7952 0098 1790, date September 19–21, 2011 2011 Copper with accrued shipping and tracking labels. 50.8 × 50.8 × 50.8 cm (20 × 20 × 20 in).
Provenance Thomas Dane Gallery, London, from whom acquired by the present owner Exhibited London, Thomas Dane Gallery, Walead Beshty Production Stills, 13 October– 14 November 2009 Catalogue Essay Walead Beshty’s conceptual practice consistently explores the nature of the production and consumption of contemporary art pushing the boundaries between politics, aesthetics and critique. Beshty was born in London but now lives and works in Los Angeles, and over the past decade he has created a striking multi-disciplinary body of work richly layered in meaning. The range of his works include monumentally scaled photograms made using X-ray machines, sculptures whose creation is left to chance, and images of a desolate suburban American landscape. The work here, a soiled copper cube with accumulated FedEx shipping labels, belongs to a series of related works in which Beshty explores “in-between time: the strange non-spaces that populate the hyper-connected world that we inhabit” (N. Bourriaud, S. Hudson and B. Nickas, Walead Beshty Natural Histories, Zurich: JPR|Ringier, 2011). More specifically, the FedEx series deals with the transit and shipment of art as a metaphor for the accrual of meaning and value through space and the passage of time. Beshty began this series in 2005 and initially used shatterproof glass cubes sized to fit FedEx shipping boxes, a shape, form and volume trademarked by the FedEx company. These were shipped from his studio to the intended exhibition spaces. When installed for display, the cardboard FedEx boxes become the pedestals on which to display the cracked glass cubes whose shattered patterns document and materialize the journey of the sculptural object. More recently, however, Beshty has forgone the FedEx cardboard boxes and shipped copper cubes unpackaged with the FedEx labels affixed directly to their surface. Because of the relatively soft texture of copper and its oxidizing properties, its surface is easily dented, scratched and tarnished, and readily accumulates fingerprints and other marks. This random process creates a beautifully patinated sculpture which serves as “an analogy for the transformation of the object based on the accumulation of symbolic value” (the artist in conversation with Mikkel Carl, 2010). Created partly by chance, like Marcel Duchamp’s The Large Glass (1915–23) which shattered during transport in 1923 and continues to evolve as it ages, Beshty’s cubes accrue shipping labels, fissures and markings and therefore accrue further meaning every time they are shipped to and from a gallery, museum or collector. Beshty’s work maintains links with Minimalism. While the earlier FedEx boxes were reminiscent of the minimalist American sculptor Larry Bell the copper boxes recall Donald Judd’s copper stacks. Both Judd and Beshty may be classified as ‘hands-off’ artists, but whereas Judd instructed metal factories to fabricate his works perfectly to his exact specifications, Beshty simply establishes a set of conditions for his works to be created by the uncontrollable elements of outside participants – namely, the FedEx Corporation and its international transit handlers. In stepping back from the artwork in this way, Beshty “pulls back the curtain to reveal how his art is made, installed, sold, processed, and shipped; rendering the prestige of the final art object obsolete” (Caryn Coleman, review of Walead Beshty Production Stills at Thomas Dane Gallery, London, in Goldsmiths Curatorial Critique online blog, 2009). Read More