Bianca Beck
See Me Plural

September 14 - October 26, 2024

Opening Reception: Saturday, September 14, 5-7 pm

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Matéria Gallery is pleased to present See Me Plural, Bianca Beck’s first solo exhibition in Detroit.

 

See Me Plural presents paintings started pre-conception and worked cumulatively over the course of three years in which Beck watched their child develop from an embryo in sonograms to now, an almost two-year-old. This art is made from the messiness and magic of unbroken days and nights with an infant and also the breaking of patterns that they enact as a queer parent in an un-gendered family. The variations in line, style, time, space, and buildup of paint are both a reflection and an accumulation of this life. 

 

See me plural 

Not through flight of birds

But in my fall alone

With no vapors or suspicions 

Mistaking two for one
 

See me plural 

Not because of chimera 

One day there could be none

But for my brawny curves still branching

Rooting into sun
 

“My body is cut in half and I become two. I first see them, still attached; we enter into light and vibration, we are always attached. I am different now, my work is different. I re-enter the studio and I can only see their face. I see them seeing.

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There is an otherworldliness to early parenthood: the all-consuming absorption, dismantling and frenetic identity shifts, a consciousness both altered and transcendent. This work contains those obsessive hours spent contemplating a single person while drifting in and out of wakefulness, drifting in and out of self. They are portraits with overlapping profiles and multiplied facial features — reflecting the layeredness of development and of our awareness.  The abundant and shifting ears, mouths, and ever watchful eyes of the paintings seem to observe and receive the viewer, while projecting visions of their own.

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In this time my own body has transformed too – I have grown a body inside my own, ceded control, been both haven and resource. A lot happens to each of us in the space of our flesh. The paradox of the body - to regenerate, degrade, grow, transform - and yet hold an enduring sense of self. These paintings were gestated and formed in a murk of time and layered selves. They are transitioning objects as we are transitional subjects to each other, retaining the intimacy of one another’s experience, emerging and re-emerging as individual/s.”

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​See Me Plural opens on Saturday, September 14, with a reception with the artist, and is on view through October 26.

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BIANCA BECK

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Bianca Beck (b. 1979, Columbus, OH) earned a BFA from Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA and an MFA from Yale University, New Haven, CT. The artist has participated in exhibitions at the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, Lincoln, MA; Beeler Gallery at Columbus College of Art and Design, Columbus, OH; Institute of Contemporary Art, Portland, ME; Opelvillen Rüsselsheim, Rüsselsheim, Germany; V1 Gallery, Copenhagen, Denmark; Tif Sigfrids Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; Misako & Rosen, Tokyo, Japan; the FLAG Art Foundation, New York, NY; White Columns, New York, NY; Cheim & Read, New York, NY; and Rachel Uffner Gallery, New York, NY among others. Beck currently has work on view at the Shelburne Museum, Shelburne, VT, and Art Omi Sculpture Park, Ghent, NY. They are a recipient of numerous awards and fellowships, including the Helen Winternitz Award for Excellence in Painting at Yale University, New Haven, CT; The Ox-Bow School of Art Fellowship Program, Saugatuck, MI; and Artist-in-Residence at Complimenta, Ithaca, NY. Beck’s work is in the permanent collection of the Dallas Art Museum, Dallas, TX, and the Rachofsky Collection, Dallas, TX. Beck currently lives and works in Portland, ME.