Vibrant matter dances and pulsates in vortical pools and currents. Artist Kevin Beasley petrifies matter in states of motion, submerging and emerging materials form dynamic topographies that embody personal and collective histories and significations. I remember my first humble encounter with Beasley’s work as an intern at Casey Kaplan Gallery in New York and have been haunted by his ghostly forms and uncanny sense of materiality ever since. 

“On Site” is Beasley’s first solo exhibition with Regen Projects in Los Angeles, presenting work from his ongoing “Slab” series as well as a new body of wall-based sculpture that furthers his consideration for the vitality of materials that embody notions of Black experience in the American South and evoke conditions of being and possibility–composed of hand-dyed cotton and items of found clothing such as socks, T-shirts, house dresses, and loose shoelaces cast in swirling pools of candy-colored resin. Spontaneous and fragmented sounds permeate and reverberate throughout the space, flooding all corners of the gallery (including the rooftop) with audio recordings taken by the artist in his hometown of Lynchburg, Virginia. This vibrational environment creates the sensation of being underwater or in a pressurized space. New variations of Beasley’s “Slab” series act as counter-sculptures to traditional European art historical relief sculpture commonly inscribed with narratives of dominance to advance white-male-human notions of “progress.” Alternatively, Beasley’s sculptural reliefs, or slabs, are abstract and open rather than closed and fixed. His energetic (almost spiritual) approach to materiality questions the limits of knowledge and constitutes a kind of radical imagining.

Regen Projects
6750 Santa Monica Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90038
On view through June 25, 2022