Open Window - Andrew Beck: Shadow Subsets

Placed next to the shadow-tracing, a steel bar (casting its own shadow), and a black-and-white, long-exposure photograph (depicting an abstracted shadow of the same steel bar) meld the artist’s drawing, photography and sculpture practice through the element of light.

These monochromatic works capture natural and artificial light, fix shadows and develop an exploration of ‘the void’, unifying and exploring the tensions between light, duration and volume. Beck uses depictions of shadow and light to respond to particular ‘pieces of time’, eliciting a transformation from these works as they co-exist, becoming interrelated entities.

These reductive works subvert our cultural perceptions of time and space, as the artist’s markings and object placement both define a location in the rotation of the earth and convey a sense of abstraction or timelessness. Exposing the tensions between linear, experiential and cyclical trajectories of time, Beck investigates philosophical ideas of indigenous and western ‘deep time’, space and stasis in his work, allowing the viewer to focus on their experiences of light in the present moment.

Curated by Meredith Robertshawe