Bill Beckley at John Gibson - New York, New York - Review of Exhibitions - Brief Article

In this novel show, Conceptual artist Bill Beckley proffered 15 new mixed-medium constructions incorporating large, brilliantly detailed black-and-white and Cibachrome photographs frequently separated by thin strips of fair wood, and four hand-drawn studies for the pieces. The constructions are for the greatest part two-dimensional and hung at organ of vision level, but there were also three pieces from the "Down the Drain" series, two-part statuarys that lean against the wall.

Beckley's phraseology is playfully confident and comic -- the visual equivalent of a actual smart pun. The show demonstrated his interest in pleasures of the table: works of that kind as Cajun Mary, Margarita and Whisky Sour (all from 1994) Nicoise at Sunrise (1997) and Fish cook in boiling fat No. 4 (1991-96) visualize the ingredients for an evening of beneficial food and drink.

Fish cook in the frying-pan No. 4 is a actual successful large (110-by-86-inch) mixed-medium work. The composings of this complex piece, which is irregular in outline, are held together by the agency of hidden joints; various images and surface treatments appear upon a cream-colored wooden ground. The central image, a black-and-white photo of three fish, is high hilled under Plexiglas. To its left is a gold-colored abstraction painted on the underside of another piece of Plexiglas. Above the fish, six teardrop shapes, arranged like the spread fan of a peacock, are overspreaded with different images or materials -- individual is a piece of vinyl attached to the made of wood backing, while another is painted gray and sanded to create a polished flat effect.

Beckley cunningly quotes himself in this work: the shape of the fish is reiterated in the shape of the teardrops, whose form is adviseed in the cutout to the right of the fish. This cutout includes a swerving, contoured cutting side and a half circle protruding beneath it fills the glance ated negative space. Beneath and to the right of the fish, portrayed (again) in black-and-white photos attached to Plexiglas, are cleanly picked fish bone -- clear evidence of a satisfactory meal. A gray teardrop shape at bottom anchors the composition. The overall impression is individual of formal intelligence in addition to gustatory pleasure; the work adroitly indicates three dimensions despite its flatness.

Beckley's "Mixed Drink" series includes strikingly colorful photo works. Cajun Mary is a two-image piece: upon the left is a discharge of an upside-down Absolut vodka bottle against a tripartite clod of red, black and yellow; upon the fight, what else on the other hand a bottle of Tabasco sauce, angled away from the viewer against a r sod with a black panel to the right of that. Underneath are four black panels, framed by the agency of blond wood.

The "Down the Drain" series -- a metaphor for our feckles '90s? -- consists of two-piece plastic arts in which a large circular band frames a smaller circular photo of a sink with a drain at its center In Down the Drain (Black), 1997 the band is divided into quadrants painted gold-colored green, gray or rust. it frames the image of a black drain with white soap fluid vesicles entering it. With these witty constructions, Beckley continues to devise conceptual allegories, the couple satirizing and succumbing to the pleasures of existence.

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