PRESS RELEASE
Robert Beck
28 March – 9 May 2002
Anthony Meier Fine Arts is pleased to announce an exhibition of new work by New York artist Robert Beck. Exhibiting at the gallery for the second time, Beck continues to explore the conceptual properties of drawing.
As an artist who works in a variety of media, drawing has become an increasingly pervasive part of Robert Beck’s work over the past few years.
Beck’s interest in drawing conceptually as a mark-making endeavor - from its traditional art making applications to its more humble, everyday manifestations - has led him to expand on the idea of drawing itself. Illustrating that drawing need not be confined to two dimensions, Beck features drawing in the fabrication of formally diverse objects. Beck also explores the performance-based aspect of drawing, exemplified by mural-size charcoal drawings of animal traps in which the original pictorial illustration is altered by the atavistic marks and smudges left by the artist making it.
The exhibition will include five distinct types of drawings in which Beck explores seemingly unrelated symbol systems: illustrations from hunting and trapping how-to guides, art-therapy drawings culled from a volume child personality assessment tests, graffiti on a public restroom wall, an artist’s sketchpad scorched by the bullet of a shotgun, and a newsprint photo of a teen killer rendered seven feet high in pastel. The continuity of these works comes from Beck’s own hand; the exacting detail with which Beck redraws the marks made by the outdoorsman’s publisher, the psychological subjects and the men’s room vigilantes begin to echo one another. The gunpowder residue on the artist’s sketchpad mirrors the performance-based aspect of the artist making the animal trap drawing. The synthesis of these distinct sets of drawings raises a host of questions regarding the subject content of the work but also answers the conceptual notion that the definition of drawing is not contingent on medium.