Lawrence Beck “Winter Thickets”

ART 3

[Image: Lawrence Beck "Thicket II" (Thickets), Ed. 1/5, (2004) Selenium toned silver gelatin print mounted and framed, Frame size: 51 x 42.25 in.]

This event has ended.

ART 3 gallery presents a solo exhibition featuring works by LAWRENCE BECK, WINTER THICKETS. This exhibition is Beck’s first solo exhibition with the gallery.

The large scale black and white photographs shown in the exhibition at ART 3 are from the series titled THICKETS (2003-2005) that Beck shot locally upstate New York during a few Winters. Those works were originally exhibited at Sonnabend gallery in 2005. With THICKETS, Beck creates precise compositions that pay particular attention to light, always preferring a soft, diffuse illumination, and shoots his images on film to produce effects distinctly different from those of familiar digital snapshots. Yet the “nature” that Beck finds often comprises a manmade mise-en-scène of carefully stage-managed spaces.

As Michele Cone expressed perfectly in her review of the work in ArtNews in June 2005: “The clarity of these photographs is astounding, as if they have been retouched by hand. What seduces most is the soft winter sunlight that shows through the tangled webs. It falls obliquely on tree trunks, vines and leafless branches, conveying stillness and peace. In the “Thickets” series, many images reveal an uncanny connection between Beck’s latest landscapes and the spaces of Abstract Expressionism…” (as seen in ArtNews, June 2005)

Beck is known for his work, the Italian Gardens that concentrates on a landscape that incorporates masterpieces of Italian architecture, ranging from structures by the famed Renaissance architect Andrea Palladio (Villa Pisani I) and buildings in the Palladian Style, to the Gardens of Ninfa, the Appian Way, and the Roman aqueducts. Beck creates precise compositions that pay particular attention to light, always preferring a soft, diffuse illumination, and shoots his images on film to produce effects distinctly different from those of familiar digital snapshots. Yet the “nature” that Beck finds often comprises a man-made mise-en-scène of carefully stage-managed spaces.

Lawrence Beck was born in New York in 1962 and graduated from SUNY, College at Purchase, in 1984. His work is included in many private collections including the August Sander Foundation, Cologne Germany, and Morgan Stanley collection in New York. The artist was represented by Sonnabend Gallery in New York until its close.