For Frieze London 2023, Casey Kaplan presents a solo booth by Kevin Beasley. With new wall-based and freestanding sculptures, Beasley establishes a domestic site framed by the landscapes that inform our shared spaces.
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Kevin Beasley
On time: For Benjamin Banneker and Peter Hill an English Movement, 2023
Sapele, Walnut, George III antique grandfather longcase clock 30hr movement 11 inch painted dial, polyurethane resin, raw Virginia cotton, altered housedresses, altered t-shirts, confetti housedresses, confetti t-shirts, cloth face mask, guineafowl feathers, fiberglass
64.75 x 18 x 10.75" / 164.1 x 45.7 x 27.3cm
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On time: For Benjamin Banneker and Peter Hill an English Movement, 2023 (Detail)
On time: For Benjamin Banneker and Peter Hill an English Movement (2023), a custom-built grandfather clock, stands preserved in time at the center of the booth. The sculpture’s framework, comprising walnut and sapele (a wood native to tropical Africa), encases materials in resin. The static timekeeper signals an intersection of distant histories and present happenings, illustrated by the work’s title, dedicated to Benjamin Banneker, the 18th century African American astronomer, naturalist, and surveyor, who built what is believed to be the first clock made in America (c. 1752); and Peter Hill, a former enslaved person, who was the first known Black horologist. The clock’s body, which ordinarily houses the mechanics that power time, is replaced with a bed of resin containing raw cotton harvested near his family-owned, century-old property in rural Virginia, fiberglass, guineafowl feathers, and altered garments and housedresses sourced from a former Harlem shop frequented for decades by Beasley’s grandmother and great-grandmother. By repurposing a vintage clockface in his New York studio and returning it to its London origin, Beasley prompts a material mapping across continents. In the absence of the chime’s melody, the geographic resonance of the work’s materials resounds.
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Kevin Beasley
On Nourishment (Sideboard), 2023
White oak, polyurethane resin, raw Virginia cotton, altered housedresses, altered t-shirts, confetti housedresses, confetti t-shirts, guineafowl feathers, fiberglass
36.25 x 60 x 15.25" / 92.1 x 152.4 x 38.4cm
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On Nourishment (Sideboard), 2023 (Detail)
On Nourishment (Sideboard) (2023) resembles a wooden credenza. Two abstract, transparent color fields of dyed resin and cotton are framed in white oak. Subtle grooves within the resin’s fragile surface demarcate where shelving units could be. Here, Beasley considers the vessels in which we store our memories—our things. Stripped of its utility, the credenza’s translucent outer shell allows us to see into a hollow interior through to the other side. The viewer is left to imagine the display of their own objects of value on an empty surface, ready to receive the weight of future impressions.
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On Nourishment (Sideboard), 2023 (Alternate view)
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Installation view: Kevin Beasley solo presentation with Casey Kaplan at Frieze New York, 2023, Booth F4
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Kevin Beasley
Garden Window IV of Flowers, 2023
Polyurethane resin, raw Virginia cotton, Sharpie transfer, fiberglass
51.5 x 35.5 x 1.5” / 130.8 x 90.2 x 3.8cm
New ‘slabs’ (sculptural forms that draw from millennia-old traditions of relief sculpture) line the walls of the booth. Abstraction further gives way to pictorial narrative, combining material and drawing through resin casting and Sharpie transfers. A series of four Garden Windows connect us to and separate us from the imagined landscapes we might dwell in. Lush grounds just beyond the viewer’s reach are bisected by raw cotton soaked in resin, like windowpanes that keep the weather out/let the light in. An exterior scape is constructed for the domestic furnishings held within.
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Garden Window IV of Flowers, 2023 (Detail)
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Garden Window IV of Flowers, 2023 (Alternate view)
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Kevin Beasley
Garden Window VI with Flowers and Monstera, 2023
Polyurethane resin, raw Virginia cotton, Sharpie transfer, fiberglass
51.5 x 35.5 x 1.5” / 130.8 x 90.2 x 3.8cm
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Garden Window VI with Flowers and Monstera, 2023 (Detail)
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Kevin Beasley
Garden Window III (Terracotta), 2023
Polyurethane resin, raw Virginia cotton, Sharpie transfer, fiberglass
51.5 x 35.5 x 1.5” / 130.8 x 90.2 x 3.8cm
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Garden Window III (Terracotta), 2023 (Detail)
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Garden Window III (Terracotta), 2023 (Alternate view)
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Kevin Beasley
Garden Window V with Spiders, 2023
Polyurethane resin, raw Virginia cotton, Sharpie transfer, fiberglass
51.5 x 35.5 x 1.5” / 130.8 x 90.2 x 3.8cm
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Garden Window V with Spiders, 2023 (Detail)
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Installation view: Kevin Beasley solo presentation with Casey Kaplan at Frieze New York, 2023, Booth F4
Two larger scaled ‘slabs,’ Haze (2023) and The Mound and the Fire in the Sky (2023) flank the booth. With broader horizon lines, they access the visual language of traditional landscape painting. The scenes of Beasley’s travels are rendered in three-dimensions—from New Orleans’ Lower Ninth Ward and the Blue Ridge Mountains of the northern Shenandoah Valley to the backdrop of Ohio skies connecting his road trips from his hometown of Lynchburg, VA to Detroit, MI. Reveries of landscapes, near and far, chart a collective experience that connects us to site.
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Kevin Beasley
The Mound and the Fire in the Sky, 2023
Polyurethane resin, raw Virginia cotton, Sharpie transfer, fiberglass
54.5 x 74 x 2" / 141 x 188 x 6.3cm
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The Mound and the Fire in the Sky, 2023 (Detail)
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Kevin Beasley
Haze, 2023
Polyurethane resin, raw Virginia cotton, Sharpie transfer, fiberglass
55.5 x 74 x 2.5” / 141 x 188 x 6.3cm
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Haze, 2023 (Detail)
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Haze, 2023 (Alternate view)
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Kevin Beasley
Vista XXXIII, 2023
Polyurethane resin, raw Virginia cotton, Sharpie transfer
15 x 19 x 1.5” / 38.1 x 48.26 x 3.81cm
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Left: Vista XXXIII, 2023 (Detail)
Right: Vista XXXIII, 2023 (Alternate view)
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Installation view: Kevin Beasley solo presentation with Casey Kaplan at Frieze New York, 2023, Booth F4
