Performances Under Working Conditions- Walead Besthty

Walead Beshty’s Performances Under Working Conditions documents traces and examines the interactions between humans and mundane objects. Having a concept of “procedure” as an artistic theme and experimenting with it in art have always been my interest, and so did why Beshty’s pieces caught my eyes.

This series use the preexisting design of gallery tables and desktops recreated in copper duplicates to “explore the ways in which objects accrue and produce meanings through their placement and circulation in the world” by allowing gallery staffs to resume their normal everyday work activities on them throughout the summer.  

It is apparent that the copper preserved the staff’s coffee rings, rested palms and elbows, scratches and even what appear to be bare foot prints, all originating from the nexus of the staffs’ day-to-day activities at the desk. These traces eventually “oxidized to mercurial stain” and recorded their movements and time. As such, Beshty offers evidence of the everyday actions performed by the staff—at least those that came into contact with one of the surfaces—which typically remain disconnected from the works hanging on the gallery walls.

However, whether or not this information is interesting in any way is debatable. It is interesting how within this procedure, he highlights- or even embellishes- the mundane into grand ways through the use of highly vibrant copper materials. Yet, what does it mean by recording the traces and time of our daily-procedur in an artificial way, and then discharge them from its original context to hang them on a gallery wall as if they were canvases?

For me, the copper pieces show us alluring marks of “discourse, transaction and negotiation” that become meaningless when taken out of the context of their original environments.  Whether or not this dislocation/ loss of meaning was Beshty’s intention, at least for me, this was where the installation fails: the over-crowded arrangement of these copper desks suffocates the sensual and informative value of both the individual pieces and the series as a whole. Nor did the installation give the impression of ironically referencing the original utilitarian environment. 

Though first drawn into these works with interests, it left me with many critical questions. Yet, all I could say for now is that it was indeed "The Performances Under Working Conditions."