Photography Exhibition: Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden - Directions—Walead Beshty: Legibility on Color Backgrounds

The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, DC, on the Mall occasionally has extraordinary photographic exhibitions. Directions—Walead Beshty: Legibility on Color Backgrounds is one such exhibition.

This exhibition will run through September 13, 2009

Los Angeles-based artist Walead Beshty creates photographs and sculptures that reconsider some of the fundamental premises of modern art. Beshty’s mesmerizing photographs blend an enduring fascination with modernist visual culture and an astute inquiry into the nature of photography. He often works with historical formats, including stereographs and photograms, but he also makes use of more recent technologies, such as color processors and digital printers. The resulting pieces reflect Beshty’s concomitant interest in the historical, conceptual, and formal premises of the medium. Moreover, his practice brings attention to the ideological underpinnings of aesthetics, the indeterminacy of viewing, and the ways photography shapes our understanding of both history and the world around us.

This exhibition combines Beshty’s photograms and sculpture in his own unusual and thought provoking style.

If you’re in the Washington DC area through mid September, I strongly suggest you take in this terrific exhibition.

As I travel, I love seeing the work of other photographers as I hope you do. If you know of a new photographic exhibition which you think the Blog should publicize, please contact me.