Monday, June 1, 2009

Photography Exhibition: Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden - Directions—Walead Beshty: Legibility on Color Backgrounds

Walead Beshty’s The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, DC, on the Mall occasionally has extraordinary photographic exhibitions. Directions—Walead Beshty: Legibility on Color Backgrounds is one such exhibition.

This exhibition will run through September 13, 2009

Los Angeles-based artist Walead Beshty creates photographs and sculptures that reconsider some of the fundamental premises of modern art. Beshty’s mesmerizing photographs blend an enduring fascination with modernist visual culture and an astute inquiry into the nature of photography. He often works with historical formats, including stereographs and photograms, but he also makes use of more recent technologies, such as color processors and digital printers. The resulting pieces reflect Beshty’s concomitant interest in the historical, conceptual, and formal premises of the medium. Moreover, his practice brings attention to the ideological underpinnings of aesthetics, the indeterminacy of viewing, and the ways photography shapes our understanding of both history and the world around us.

This exhibition combines Beshty’s photograms and sculpture in his own unusual and thought provoking style.

If you’re in the Washington DC area through mid September, I strongly suggest you take in this terrific exhibition.

As I travel, I love seeing the work of other photographers as I hope you do. If you know of a new photographic exhibition which you think the Blog should publicize, please contact me.

2 comments:

George said...

Ned, I can only say mea culpa, mea culpa!

I put off reading your photography blog newsletter yesterday morning while away and it cost me. We were away in DC and didn't stop in the Hirshhorn because we put off reading your newsletter and going to the Blog until we got back home to Boston last night, even though we were taking care of our email while away.

By the way, after reading your columns at Tripso for the last 6 months we decided to try out the train. In the past, if we went past NYC we flew. Acela was great. We took the 3:00pm Acela and arrived in Boston 6 and a half hours later. We couldn't have done it any faster door to door if we flew and we didn't have to worry about TSA or lost luggage, plus it was so much more comfortable than waiting forever at the airport and then being cramped in the plane.

Your columns at Tripso and here on your Blog are great. We won't put off reading them again.

George

Joyce & Ben said...

Hi Ned,

This exhibit is a blast. This guy is incredibly inventive. It isn't exactly photography, but anyone interested in photography has got to find this work amazing.

Thanks for bringing it to our attention.

Joyce & Ben

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