Pelavin Gallery is proud to announce a solo exhibition of recent work by American artist, Kate Beck, Conditions of Existence. This show will include large scale poured oil paintings and graphite drawings on aluminum panel. This will be Beck’s first solo exhibition at the gallery, and in New York City.

In this new body of work, Beck continues her engagement with repetitive tonal rendering as a means of interaction between light and shadow, human thought and consciousness, and the dynamic architectonics of space. This time she takes the essence of form further by using aluminum substrates, allowing modulating marks of graphite and poured oil to accumulate and shift amidst the confines of the geometric shapes. Tension oscillates between formalistic geometry and existential space; an allusion to thought and consciousness, and the passage of time.

Critic Philip Isaacson writes:

“…Beck’s work ultimately achieves moments so insistently animated that each succeeding viewing becomes an initiation… one of those sought-after moments in art, a moment of vision, here… which allowed the artist to reach beyond aesthetics to a consideration of movement in perpetual opposition to structure. Beck’s lines and the spaces between them are never at rest. They resonate in perpetuity…”

Coalesced of intensity, intimacy and silence through muted color cadences and detailed surfaces, the new works at Pelavin Gallery are evidenced within Beck’s signature palette of black, white and grey.

“… I am involved in the visual and philosophical pursuit of exploring the architectonics of space. I create works that result from a systematic starting point of materials and geometric shape. My life work, however, reflects a persistent inquiry into the nature of the world around me, and my role within this world. I create work because it is my habitual form of personal expression.”

Born in Maine in 1956, Beck has studied art and writing at the University of Maine at Orono, Bennington College, Goddard College and the Maine College of Art. She has been the focus of numerous articles and interviews, including Drawing Lines, by Brent Hallard, Tokyo, Japan, 2009, and Writings on Art by Fiona Robinson, London, UK, 2010. She is a contributing essayist on contemporary art and culture at The Drawing Research Network, Loughborough University School of Art & Design, Leicestershire, UK and publishes a blog, KATE BECK :: ART NOTES. Her essay, Brooks Run to the Ocean: The Paintings of Steven Alexander, was published in 2010 by Gremillion and Co. Fine Art, Houston, TX.