I think that viewers can engage with work on multiple levels; I don't want to teach a lesson or provide a recipe, but I actively try not to conceal.
In regard to medium distinctions, he has emphasized that he "tr[ies] to consider each body of work on its own terms, discretely, so terms like 'sculpture' or 'photography,' in their broad sense, don't really enter into [his] thinking … "[10] The series of large-format photographs documents an abandoned Iraqi diplomatic office located in former East Berlin, itself vacated to the West by the German Democratic Republic in 1990.
Before photographing the site, Beshty's unexposed film was damaged by airport security X-ray machines while traveling to Berlin.
This generated images with "large washes of color … superimposed over them"[11] of a site "denatured of its sovereignty and exposed to the elements," The set of nine works was first shown at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles in 2006,[12] and has been shown in exhibitions worldwide including in the 2008 Biennial Exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York.
In his essay on Beshty's work for the book Walead Beshty: Selected Correspondences 2001–2010 (Damiani Editore, 2010), Jason E. Smith describes the Transparencies as "consist[ing] of grainy, virtually monochrome fields of degraded color (lavenders, pinks, plums, scarlets, turquoise; but also steely grays and charcoal blues) bisected edge-to-edge by either white bands that evoke shafts of soft light or, inversely, deep graphite grays resembling cast shadows … The Transparencies ... originate in the very public, transitional space of the international airport, a very specific form of public space saturated with techniques of surveillance, monitoring, and scanning, and an in-between space situated in the intervals between sovereign states and their relatively unambiguous juridical frameworks."
In a dialog with the exhibition curator Nicolas Bourriaud published in the exhibition catalog, Beshty comments on the conditions of the airport and air travel, stating, "In this constellation of forces, the x-ray has pride of place, delineating the edge between the 'real' world, and the siteless limbo of air travel.
Its accidental discovery in the late 1800s fits seamlessly into modernity's fascination with transparency: the desire to capture the minutiae of movement (cinema), to turn objects into surface (photography), to see inside (x-ray).
Subsequent black and white and color photogram series have been produced using similar processes, which Beshty describes as "multiple tracings of a three-dimensional object on the field of the photograph.
"[17] In response to the photogram works being described as abstract, Beshty states that "Any standard, lens-based, figurative photograph is necessarily 'abstract' in the technical sense of the term.
The final work "is not only the result of the tension between the size of the paper, the confines of the darkroom, and the artist's own body, but also the effects of the architectural infrastructure (i.e., the HVAC system, building vibration, etc.
The FedEx waybills, customs documentation, and any shipping stickers added to the box are considered part of the work.
It's a proprietary volume of space, distinct from the design of the box, which is identified through what's called a SSCC #, a Serial Shipping Container Code.
Beshty produced the first Selected Works pieces as a part of his 2008 exhibition in Los Angeles, Science Concrète.
I feel a need to include the by-products, all of which never make it to the final show, and to figure out a way they can reach the exhibition site.
It is also a work in progress … Every visitor to the exhibition therefore becomes an active participant in the creative process … what the floor demarcates is a zone in which a circulation of bodies is registered.
Beshty describes the active production of the work as "trac[ing] the immaterial labor of discourse, transaction, and negotiation that occurs across these surfaces, whether between insiders (for example, the discussion between a curator and a gallerist) or with a public (for example the interaction between a gallery receptionist and a visitor to the exhibition).
In each of these instances, the meaning of the work is being constructed incrementally in both large and small ways, and is distributed by those individuals who engage across those surfaces.
The resulting piece was installed in 2014 on the 90-meter long wall of the Barbican Centre's Curve gallery from ceiling to floor.
The last month of the project, Beshty produced cyanotypes in residence at the Barbican Centre with discarded items from the venue.
Beshty states that the work "tells a very broad picture of the different productive forces that are moved through the studio.
A & B)[35] at the Rose Museum of Art at Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts (2013, co-curated with Christopher Bedford); Sunless (Journeys in Alta California since 1933)[36] at Thomas Dane Gallery, London (2010); Picture Industry (Goodbye to All That)[37] at Regen Projects, Los Angeles (2010); The Gold Standard[38] at PS1 Contemporary Art Center, New York (2006, co-curated with Bob Nickas); and Pictures Are the Problem[39] at Pelham Art Center, Pelham, New York (2005), among others.
In addition, he has authored many monographic texts on artists such as Jay DeFeo, Sharon Lockhart, Kelley Walker, Luisa Lambri, Annette Kelm, and Michael Asher, among others.