Vija Clemins

House #2

1965

Before they become sculptures, the objects in Kevin Beasley’s sculptures undergo a prolonged period of neutralization. In his studio, bins upon bins of gnarly clothing, old shoes, and mangled foam sit among audio equipment both cutting-edge and in complete disrepair. My colleague Magdalyn Asimakis has argued that this is an integral step in Beasley’s transformation of these objects, in which he manipulates their familiar, indexical relationship to the body toward radically disorienting, destabilizing ends. Not only does his refunctioning undermine our assumed relationship to the object world, it also disrupts notions of fixity that we ascribe to materials and people alike. “The works do not languish as composite constructions of powerless parts,” Magdalyn writes. “Indexed to both the artist’s and viewers’ bodies, the sculptures implicate those with whom they share space, disorienting assumptions. In so doing, they disrupt the fixity of bodily identification and locate the ambiguous body as a site of the present.” Furthermore, by manipulating his materials into the realm of abjection, Beasley invokes a space outside the traditional dualistic power relation of subject and object, suggesting another way of being in the world. Kevin’s work is on view in our show, “That I am reading backwards and into for a purpose, to go on:” at The Kitchen, until June 10.