Grant Wahlquist, Portland (ME)
Tad Beck and Jennifer Locke
Grant Wahlquist Gallery is presenting a two-person exhibition of Tad Beck and Jennifer Locke, offering a fresh appraisal of the artists’ formal affinities on the tenth anniversary of their last joint exhibition. In his series “Blanks,” Beck uses an innovative form of re-photography (an iterative process of photographing photographs) to transform faint reflections into quietly ravishing abstractions in which the studio itself functions as an apparatus for the creation of a new abstract space.
At Art-o-rama 2022, the gallery debuts previously un-exhibited works from this series made in the studio of American painter Winslow Homer. Beck’s work is paired with a video installation by Locke, who is well-known for creating physically intense sculptural actions that activate the relationships between camera, audience, and architecture. Her video work Spells I is a series of six technologically-manipulated vertically-oriented actions intended to: trap electricity, loop time, levitate, reverse looking, temporarily immobilize the viewer, and dematerialize/rematerialize. Each action is a few seconds to no more than a minute in length, yet is in fact the product of lengthy effort in the studio; these actions loop, repeat, and reverse, compressing and dilating time as their visual and auditory rhythms produce hypnotic effects. Simultaneously structuralist and spiritualist, Beck and Locke’s works continue their pursuit of photography and video’s limits.
