Walead Beshty

Walead Beshty, born 1976 in London, investigates in his work the functioning of the art system and its effects on works of art. His artworks are mostly geometrically abstract in form and industrially produced. This reminds us of the principles of minimal art. However, Beshty does not understand his works as autonomous objects that are developed in interaction with the exhibition space and the viewers. Instead, he sees them within a broader context in which they are produced, transported, installed, exhibited, viewed, traded, and discussed.For the artist, these aspects of the art system are so decisive for the existence and relevance of works of art that they virtually help design the works. Materials, production conditions, studio and exhibition spaces, transport systems, institutional constraints and the environment of criticism, the public, collectors, galleries etc. are essential for artistic decisions, and thus they exert a strong influence on the aesthetics and perception of art. Beshty's works make this interdependence clear: they are conceived in such a way as to document their own genesis as well as to make visible the influences of the system in which the works also function: as a commodity, a carrier of meaning, a means of transport, a news archive, a fetish, an object of research, etc.Hence the artist deals on the one hand with the basic conditions of artistic work and on the other hand with the context in which the works are embedded, evaluated and sold. The mutual influence of all these elements can be experienced in his exhibitions as a dynamic network of artistic freedom and system constraints.Walead Beshty lives and works in Los Angeles. His work encompasses numerous media such as photography, sculpture, installation, prints, drawings and collages. The exhibition at the Kunst Museum Winterthur presents various recent groups of works, many of them for the first time. The publication "Works in Exhibitions 2011 - 2020" is published on the occasion of his exhibitions at Kunst Museum Winterthur (until 19.4.2020) and MAMCO, Geneva (2019).Text: Noam Elcott, Lynn Kost, Interviews with Walead Beshty: Lionel Bovier, Hamza Walker