Ping-Pong Dialogues   Curated by Jo Melvin, May-June, 2008, Chelsea Space, London

This exhibition presents the American artist Bill Beckley's seminal work Silent Ping-Pong 1971 for the first time in the UK.
Ping-Pong Dialogues points to relationships between artwork, documentation, context and reception to explore the shift in definitions of sculpture within the early 1970's artistic practice.
Debates and discussion from magazine pages and documentation of other works made by Beckley from the period will form an intrinsic part of the display.

Silent Ping-Pong was in Beckley's first solo show at 112 Greene Street, New York in 1972, formerly an industrial building, where artists organized experimental shows and events.
Many made notable contributions to developments in practice - a few examples - Louise Bourgeois,
Vito Acconci, Dennis Oppenheim and Chris Burden. Beckley's show, on April 16th 1972 combined installation and performance.
The performance was at Holly Solomon's loft, another experimental space, 98 Greene Street, where Song for a Chin up and Song for a Slide were performed.
The songs metaphorised the actions performed by students from the Juilliard School of Music.
Documentation of these events will be part of the exhibition.
112 Greene Street's first show had work by Bill Beckley, Gordon Matta Clark, Rafael Ferrer, Barry Le Va, Jeffrey Lew and Alan Saret.
It was documented in Avalanche and reviewed by Peter Scheljdahl in the New York Times.

The dealer John Gibson took Silent Ping-Pong, to the Basel Art Fair where it was spotted by Benjamin Buchloh, then a gallery assistant, he arranged its inclusion in the inaugural show of Rudolf Zwirner Gallery.
Silent Ping-Pong was in "Behind the Facts: Interfunktionen 1968-1974" curated by Gloria Maure at Miro Fundació, Barcelona in 2004, the show toured to Porto and Kassel where Fritz Heubach, founding editor of Interfunktionen and Beckley were not allowed to play on the tables, due to gallery restrictions.
We hope to re-instigate the match.
The exhibition will present Hopscotch, and Short Stories for Popsicles and will encourage pinging, hopping and sucking as tangible routes to aesthetic process and experience.

Bill Beckley is a major international artist.
He has worked with many dealers including Yvon Lambert, Nigel Greenwood and Hans Mayer - currently producing a monograph.
Beckley makes serious contributions to discussions in aesthetic theory and he edited Sticky Sublime, 2001 and Uncontrollable Beauty, 1998.

This show grows from continuing conversations arising from a series of interviews contingent on shared research interests conducted by Lisa Le Feuvre and Jo Melvin in New York in 2005.
The exhibition Avalanche 1970 - 1976, curated by Lisa Le Feuvre, took place at CHELSEA Space in June/July 2005.
Ping-Pong Dialogues alludes to interaction with the exhibition 'Tales from Studio International Archive' also curated by Jo Melvin and on display at Tate Britain - when the open space between CHELSEA space and Tate Britain becomes a metaphorical echo of the site of debates across the Atlantic and into Europe between Studio International and magazines such as Art Forum, Avalanche and Interfunktionen.

CHELSEA space, London

Jo Melvin, curator of “Ping-Pong Dialogues,” provocatively anticipates that the exhibition “will encourage pinging, hopping, and sucking as tangible routes to aesthetic process and experience.”
And it does—by way of the sculptures and performances that American artist Bill Beckley first presented in SoHo in the 1970s.
The show’s central work is Silent Ping-Pong, 1971, Beckley’s installation of three Ping-Pong tables, from an original group of four, whose tabletops and paddles he clad with foam to eliminate the sound of the ball against the surfaces.
When the work was first shown at 112 Greene Street in New York, the silence of the game rivaled the energy and animation of the players.
Here, the work is shown alongside documentation of several other performances by Beckley: Song for a Chin Up, 1972, and Song for a Sliding Board, 1971.
Both involved singers who combined physical actions (lifting and sliding, respectively) with vocal reactions, testing the call and response between body and voice.
Originally performed in Holly Solomon’s loft, another seminal downtown space, the works demonstrated how the relationship between performance and sculpture motivated both performers and audience, as well as instigating impassioned transatlantic dialogue, much of it documented in the defunct periodicals Avalanche, an American magazine, and Interfunktionen, a German one, both of which are also on view. In the spirit of Beckley’s original performances, viewers are invited to hop on the flat vinyl board in Short Story for Hopscotch, 1971, and to eat (or just suck) a Popsicle from Get Them by the Bunch, 1971, their contact with the objects, once again, adding sound and meaning to otherwise still tableaux.

Courtney J. Martin