Beckley's work of the past five or six years looks as new as the new millennium,
and yet for years he has exchanged the ruled line of the minimalists for the less predictable linearity of stems and branches.
After painting trees in the late 1960s and early '70s,
he pictured twigs and stems
in photo pieces of a few years later.
In the 1980s, he mimicked blades of grass with lengths of green aluminum pipe.
Over the decades, metaphors evolved, allusions ramified.
Because there is never one true meaning to be extracted from a work of art, it remains endlessly open to interpretation.
Inviting and eluding the attempt to make sense of it, the work brings one, eventually,
to a sense of oneself.
Exerpt from Pathways to a self, introduction by Carter Ratcliff
New book
Pathways to a self
Available through:
Galerie Hans Mayer, Düsseldorf, Germany
Walther Konig Publishing, Cologne, Germany
Read more
Art Basel, June 10-14, 2009
Represented at Art Basel by Galerie Hans Mayer, Düsseldorf.
Read
Ping-Pong Dialogues, Chelsea Space, London, 2008
Pathways to a self, Introduction by Carter Ratcliff
The child in the House, David Carrier
Generosity and the Black Swan, Bill Beckley
Sticky Sublime, Bill Beckley
Louise Bourgeois (On Sunday Afternoons)