Jarrod Beck is an installation artist, printmaker and sculptor. He has created outdoor sculptures for Socrates Sculpture Park (Astoria, NY), Sara D. Roosevelt Park (NY, NY), Calder Plaza (Grand Rapids, MI) and the Anti-Defamation League (Omaha, NE); installations at Wave Hill, South Street Seaport Museum, Bemis Center for Contemporary Art, Instituto Cervantes, Rhode Island School of Design, Stony Brook University, Universidad Central de Venezuela, Cape Cod National Seashore and the Provincetown Art Association and Museum. His drawings are in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art. He was recently a Visiting Artist at UrbanGlass in Brooklyn and has been an artist-in-residence at Dieu Donné Papermill, MacDowell Colony, Fine Arts Work Center, Yaddo, Sculpture Space, Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop, Lower East Side Printshop, Vermont Studio Center, Siena Art Institute and the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation. His collaborations include a series of prints and a score for sculpture created with the choreographer Will Rawls, an installation created for performance artist John Kelly’s Love of a Poet, and a series of prop-sculptures for the choreographer Jon Kinzel. He earned a M.Arch degree from Tulane University and a MFA from the University of Texas at Austin.
STATEMENT
My work creates a visceral bridge between our physical and perceptual experiences of natural phenomena. I use materials on vast scales to overwhelm peripheral vision and to increase potential points of contact for the viewer. Scorched wood, plant fiber beaten and mixed with the dust of oxidizing steel and paper slowly fading in the sun tap into emotions triggered by our remembered experiences of texture, color and scale.
I make drawings in, on and against space. On a site along NYC's East River, I drew a charcoal line against the skyline of Manhattan. The scent of “Quarry”, built from scorched pine, beckoned you to engage with each burnt slab that made this line-turned surface-turned space. The sculpture was a platform, a shed roof, and, during Hurricane Sandy, a filter. These lines I draw in space expand into fields and their position in relationship to the body is purposeful: I engage the viewer by asking them to shift their weight, crouch and stretch to take in a piece.
I have developed more active interactions with my sculptures by working with choreographers, sound and performance artists to offer specific ways to delaminate my works in public. These collaborations are the future of my work: a score of spaces carved into the land, drawn by long walks with materials captured in the moment they change state, marking the frisson between humans and the environment.