Kevin Beasley

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Kevin Beasley
Image Not Available for Kevin Beasley

Kevin Beasley

American, born 1985
BiographyKevin Beasley was born in Lynchburg and is currently based in New York. He earned a BFA in painting and sculpture from the College of Creative Studies, Detroit, where he previously studied automotive design, and an MFA in sculpture from Yale University, New Haven. Beasley works with everyday objects and the cultural references that they embody. Using materials as disparate as personal ephemera, studio debris, and music samples, Beasley creates sculptural works that combine history and memory. His recent exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art, A view of a landscape…, explored the material and social-historical reverberations of the cotton gin in terms of labor and race.

“When you understand the materiality of an object or the things that you’re working with, you’re able to extract something that maybe you couldn’t quite anticipate. . . . I am drawn toward taking a hat or a grimy, grungy T-shirt and setting the stage for someone to really look at that thing. I want the viewer to consider what the object is at its essence, . . ., I want to give time and space to this thing in a different way.”
Person TypeIndividual