Known for their vibrantly painted sculptures and expressive painting son wood, Portland-based artist Bianca Beck is wildly accomplished in both mediums. Using the human figure as inspiration, they move beyond mere representation while preserving gestural energy, creating works that complement each other and even seem to collude.
“The human form is always in transformation, moving, aging, growing, shrinking, shedding skin, and changing,” says Bianca. “As the site of all experience, our bodies hold our own histories, as well as that of each other.”
Their outsized sculptures, comprised of wire and papier-mâché or fiberglass, feel nearly sentient, muscular, colorful hulks that seem poised to sway or bend or dance, while their frenetic paintings often teem with eyes, fringed lashes fanning in all directions, suggesting a multiplicity of bodies and selves, unbound by physics. Collectively, the works share an almost Day-Glo coloration, a kinship of energetic hues that creates cohesion and continuity.
“I’ve never seen a separation between mediums,” Bianca explains. “I think the words painting and sculpture, as they are formally defined, are interchangeable. I would say that I flip the associated ways of working in those mediums onto the other. So, in “sculpture” I’m thinking about color, line, composition, and in “painting” I’m thinking in quote-unquote “sculptural” ways, carving out space (sometimes literally carving out space by using wood carving tools on my wood panels, digging out the panel or scraping off the paint), building, and creating dimensionality. In my current work, the sculptures function as an amplification and confrontation of experience. I’ve always thought of these sculptures as portraits, not in the traditional manner that captures a singular pose, but rather as portraits that show transformation and multiplicity. All points of time at once.”
Exploring dynamic themes from protest to procreation, Bianca stretches and subverts the raw materials of their mediums to constantly surprise the viewer. “Scale plays a huge role; the relationship of the viewer’s body to the size, mass, and power of a monumentally scaled work provokes a physical reckoning. The layering of biomorphic shapes and use of fluorescent and discordant color schemes physically jars the viewer into alertness and awareness. I am a queer nonbinary person, and I think there is a parallel to the way I relate to identity, my own sense of self, and materials and mediums. I feel it is essential and urgent to dissolve boundaries, binaries, and categories and embrace complexity. We contain fluidity, complexity, and resilience.We contain all of this in every moment of our lives. ▪
