Andrew Beck’s works are striking for their formal precision. His practice combines site-specific installation, photography and aspects of painting, and he is particularly well-known for his photograms (cameraless photography). Academic Christina Barton noted, ‘despite the analogue nature of his practice, Beck is the product of our digital era’.
He is embedded in a system in which actual space and present time blur seamlessly with a screen-centric domain in which images swirl, where distances collapse and multiple temporalities coexist. In this new condition the call to medium specificity seems redundant, for now things and their representations merge and blur; place and non-place, past and present fluidly intermingle. In this space the hierarchies of original and copy, surface and depth, a privileged real and its suspect other, pure idea and material substrate, are reordered or simply discarded. This is why Beck can both quote his artistic sources and redefine the tenets of their thinking.’
Beck was awarded the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation residency in Captiva Florida in 2019. His work is held in the collections of Victoria University Wellington, Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa and The Chartwell Collection, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki. Beck has exhibited widely in New Zealand and internationally and is regularly curated into important exhibitions including Emanations, Govett-Brewster Art Gallery; Trace of Existence, Ullens Centre for Contemporary Art, Beijing and The Specious Present, Adam Art Gallery Te Pātaka Toi, Wellington. Beck lives and works in New Zealand.
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2023
Ultra, Nadene Milne Gallery, Arrowtown, NZ
2022
Soft Filter, Tauranga Art Gallery, Tauranga, NZ
2021
2019
Distortions, Sumer Contemporary Art, Tauranga, NZ
Image Atrophy, Bowerbank Ninow, Auckland, NZ
2018
Open Surface, Bowerbank Ninow, Auckland, NZ
2017
Petrichor, Hamish Mackay, Wellington, NZ
2016
Pressure Angle (curated by Sophie O’Brien), Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, New Plymouth, NZ
Diagrams, Hamish Mackay, Wellington, NZ
2015
Redux, Hamish McKay Gallery, Wellington, NZ
2014
Platforms, Hamish McKay Gallery, Wellington, NZ
New Positions, Art Cologne (Luis Campaña booth), DE
Shadow Subset, Open window, Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, New Plymouth
2013
Invariances, Luis Campaña Gallery, Berlin, DE
Resistance & Relief, Hamish McKay Gallery, Wellington, NZ
1/1, ParisCONCRET, Paris, FR
2010
Framework, Enjoy Public Art Gallery, Wellington, NZ
GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2024
Chrysalis (with Suji Park), Envy6011, Wellington, NZ
2023
The Polyphonic Sea (curated by Sophie O’Brien), Bundanon Art Museum, Sydney
An Inverse Unit of Time, Whangārei Art Museum, NZ
2022
Pages of Mercury (in Collaboration with Séraphine Pick), City Gallery Wellington, NZ
Quiet Earth (in Collaboration with Séraphine Pick), Nadene Milne Gallery, Christchurch, NZ
2020
Black White, Hamish Mackay, Wellington, NZ
Group Show, Visions, Auckland, NZ
2019
New Photography, Nadene Milne Gallery, Christchurch, NZ
2018
Unsold, Hamish Mackay, Wellington, NZ
Photographs and photograms, Hamish Mackay, Wellington, NZ
2017
An Elegy to Apertures, Centre for Contemporary Photography, Melbourne, AU
Back to Front, Hamish Mackay, Wellington, NZ
2016
Emanations: The Art of the Cameraless Photograph, (curated by Geoff Batchen), Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, New Plymouth, NZ
The Devil’s Blind Spot, Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū, NZ
Trace of Existence (curated by Philip Tinari), Ullens Centre for Contemporary Art, Beijing, CN
2015
The Specious Present (curated by Tina Barton), Adam Art Gallery Te Pātaka Toi, Wellington, NZ
2013
Shifting Lines, Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū, NZ
Summer Group Show, Luis Campaña Gallery, Berlin, DE
2012
Black Out Solid, Hamish McKay Gallery, Wellington, NZ
Ménage à Trois, XYZ Collective, Tokyo, JP
2010
Further Convictions Pending, City Gallery, Wellington, NZ
ART FAIRS
2024
Spirit Level, Aotearoa Art Fair (APS editions booth), Auckland
2018
Unison, Melbourne Art Fair (Bowerbank Ninow Booth), Melbourne, AU
Auckland Art Fair, (Bowerbank Ninow Booth), Auckland
RESIDENCIES
2019
Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, Florida, US
PUBLIC COLLECTIONS
Auckland Art gallery Chartwell collection
Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa
Victoria University collection
Wellington City Council collection