LISA BECK
These are images of selected works on paper from the last few years. They involve paint, crayon, collage, stencilling, printing. Working on paper is a place to experiment and the results often lead to new developments in paintings and other works. My work comes into being as a combination of my actions and the qualities inherent in the materials used, such as the texture of fabric, patterns in wood grain, or the mingling of diluted colors. I make choices but welcome a lack of control: the way the paint soaks in or stays on the surface, the way a pencil skips over a rough surface of paper, what is visible when painting through the weave of burlap, or pressing painted objects to the paper.
Much of my work involves the integration of so-called opposites like positive/negative, flatness/depth, pattern/randomness, representation/abstraction, and observing the relationships and places where they meet or interact. My work is driven by certain preoccupations that can be divided between the particular (observable aspects of reality–the landscape, our bodies) and the universal (what is too vast or too tiny for us to grasp completely– space, atomic physics—that necessarily become an abstraction). My most prevalent motif is the circle because of all its references: star, atom, void, cell, self and the way it can be all those things at once.
Since the 1980s, Lisa Beck’s work has been exhibited in the US and internationally in venues including MoMA PS1, White Columns, MAMCO – Museé d’ Art moderne et contemporain (Geneva), Circuit, (Lausanne), Portland Institute of Contemporary Art (OR) and the Tang Teaching Museum(NY). She had seven solo shows and participated in numerous group shows at Feature Inc. from 1992-2014
Lisa’s work has been included in publications including Painting Abstraction: New Elements in Abstract Painting by Bob Nickas, (2009, Phaidon Press) and Are You Experienced? by Ken Johnson (2011, Prestel). The Middle of Everywhere, a monograph on her work from 1986-2015, was published in 2015. Beck’s work is included in collections of the Tang Teaching Museum of Skidmore College; the Maramotti Collection, Italy; the FRAC pays de la Loire, France; Museé des Beaux-Arts La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland; JP Morgan Chase; Nestlé; Progressive and many private collections. She lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.
For more information see https://www.lisabeck.net/