Editor’s pick: ‘A view of a landscape’, Kevin Beasley, δημοσίευση CLOT Magazine [18/1/2023]
Kevin Beasley, the renowned American artist working, is presenting a new multidisciplinary and collaborative project.
Beasley is known for sculpture that incorporates found materials – especially clothing – and casting materials like resin and foam. He’s also working with sculpture, performance art, and sound installation.
Sound has been a central aspect of artist Kevin Beasley’s creative practice from its onset. An expansive range of sounds has been woven throughout his installations, exhibitions, and performance works in numerous ways. His upcoming A View of a Landscape is an ambitious project that builds on all his work by pairing together an extensive 300-page book of visuals and essays (edited by Karsten Lund and Solveig Øvstebø) with a deep incursion into sonic terrain in the form of a double LP featuring sound/music contributions from Fred Moten, Laurel Halo, L’Rain, Kelsey Lu, Jason Moran, Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe, Moor Mother, Eli Keszler, Jlin, SCRAAATCH, Ralph Lemon, Okwui Okopkwasili, and Kevin himself.
This new publication has its creative outlook with Beasley’s New York solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art, A view of a landscape (2018 – 2019). The exhibition centred around his installation of a recovered cotton gin motor from Maplesville, Alabama. In operation from 1940 to 1973, this industrial motor powered the gins that separated cotton seeds from fibre.
Beasley, in turn, through the use of customized microphones, soundproofing, and audio hardware, used the cotton gin motor to generate sound as if it were a musical instrument. But it’s important to note that his installation deliberately divorced the physical motor from the noises it produced, enabling visitors to experience sight and sound as distinct elements. As an immersive experience, the work meditated on history, land, race, and labour.
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