Associate Professor Kim Beck exhibits new animations and works on paper in a solo show at Montalvo Art Center. As a Fellow at the Lucas Artist Program (LAP) at Montalvo Arts Center, the works on view in this exhibition were created by the artist during a three month residency at the LAP this spring. Beck’s worksare based on experiences of external and internal landscapes, the limits of representation and language, and the process of drawing as a metaphor for change.

“These animations reflect the experience of being alive – the cycle of gestures, choices and actions countered by loss and change. The phrases written on some of the drawings, such as “I wish I knew what to say” and “There are no words” are a response to feeling at a loss for language: this last year my mother died, and then on top of that unspeakable experience, the country catastrophically lost the election. These losses have made language almost impossible. These drawings are on the edge of where written language and gesture meet, where a scribble might become a written word. As Samuel Beckett writes in his play The Unnamable: “You must go on. / I can’t go on. / I’ll go on.” Exhibition website