Kevin Beasley: Proscenium| Rebirth/Growth: The Watch/Harvest/Dormancy: On Reflection
Kevin Beasley (b. Lynchburg, VA, 1985) explores the environmental, cultural, and political dimensions of the American landscape. With PROSCENIUM| Rebirth / Growth: The Watch / Harvest / Dormancy: On Reflection (2024鈥�25), Beasley inaugurates Storm King鈥檚 new Tippet鈥檚 Field with his largest work to date, measuring one hundred feet long by eleven feet tall.
For this site-specific installation, four triptychs, each formed from three cast-resin slabs, represent the four seasons. Beasley renders each scene with gestural marks in resin, Sharpie, and various casting techniques. Densely layered clothing, plants, farm tools, and seeds form the earth and sky, which meet along a shifting horizon line. On the reverse, a varied topography reveals the artist鈥檚 unique method of layering resin and an assortment of collected materials inside the frame to create a three-dimensional composition. The resulting work contains layers of material memory, evoking strata of land. The installation鈥檚 curved form recalls that of a proscenium, the space in front of a theater curtain where performance and audience meet. Throughout his practice, Beasley engages sound and performance as a means of channeling the histories and lived experiences embedded in the American landscape. Set within Tippet鈥檚 Field, his multisensory work frames and reflects the surrounding landscape, engaging the viewer in a fully embodied experience of place.
For more than a century, Beasley鈥檚 family has owned land in Valentines, Virginia鈥攁 remarkable inheritance for a Black family and a lens through which the artist reflects on land stewardship, farming, and the legacies of colonialism. At Storm King, his engagement with the local landscape converses with and complicates the work of the Hudson River School, a group of artists who produced idealized landscape paintings in the nineteenth century. 鈥淟andscape is a word to ask questions around,鈥� says Beasley. 鈥淔or some folks it means freedom, and for others it means something you can鈥檛 access . . . [it] tells a deep story and speaks in ways that encourage us to absorb experiences.鈥�
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Kevin Beasley (b. Lynchburg, VA, 1985) explores the environmental, cultural, and political dimensions of the American landscape. With PROSCENIUM| Rebirth / Growth: The Watch / Harvest / Dormancy: On Reflection (2024鈥�25), Beasley inaugurates Storm King鈥檚 new Tippet鈥檚 Field with his largest work to date, measuring one hundred feet long by eleven feet tall.
For this site-specific installation, four triptychs, each formed from three cast-resin slabs, represent the four seasons. Beasley renders each scene with gestural marks in resin, Sharpie, and various casting techniques. Densely layered clothing, plants, farm tools, and seeds form the earth and sky, which meet along a shifting horizon line. On the reverse, a varied topography reveals the artist鈥檚 unique method of layering resin and an assortment of collected materials inside the frame to create a three-dimensional composition. The resulting work contains layers of material memory, evoking strata of land. The installation鈥檚 curved form recalls that of a proscenium, the space in front of a theater curtain where performance and audience meet. Throughout his practice, Beasley engages sound and performance as a means of channeling the histories and lived experiences embedded in the American landscape. Set within Tippet鈥檚 Field, his multisensory work frames and reflects the surrounding landscape, engaging the viewer in a fully embodied experience of place.
For more than a century, Beasley鈥檚 family has owned land in Valentines, Virginia鈥攁 remarkable inheritance for a Black family and a lens through which the artist reflects on land stewardship, farming, and the legacies of colonialism. At Storm King, his engagement with the local landscape converses with and complicates the work of the Hudson River School, a group of artists who produced idealized landscape paintings in the nineteenth century. 鈥淟andscape is a word to ask questions around,鈥� says Beasley. 鈥淔or some folks it means freedom, and for others it means something you can鈥檛 access . . . [it] tells a deep story and speaks in ways that encourage us to absorb experiences.鈥�
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