Picture Made by My Hand with the Assistance of Light

In a practice ranging from photography to sculpture to installation, Walead Beshty makes self-reflexive works with structures that are firmly rooted in their own material properties. In 2006, he began a series of large photograms (photographs made without a camera) called Pictures Made by My Hand with the Assistance of Light. Handling an unwieldy stretch of paper sized just to the reach of his arms, Beshty crumpled, folded, and otherwise manipulated his material in the darkroom while selectively exposing it to light. The resulting patterns are random, beautiful, and transparently expressive of the artist’s considerable physical effort. Photographic materials and procedures are specific elements to be borne in mind by the viewer. In keeping with his emphasis on revelation and physical presence, Beshty dates all his works with this title to the year of their first public presentation, which in this case took place in 2011.