Rachel Uffner Gallery is pleased to present Body Double, Bianca Beck’s third solo exhibition with the gallery.
Initially inspired by political protests—the swell of their mass and voice— these works made over the past year consider the expansion of the individual in relation to collectivity, expression, creativity, and partnership. Beck alludes to a myth from Plato’s Symposium which posits that our original forms were bodies doubled. Each congenitally tied to a partner, bodies were the size and strength of two. Charged with the power of wholeness, these beings were celebratory, acrobatic, and prone to revolt.
Body Double imagines new possibilities for bodies and futures. Informed by the abstract and visionary thinking of radicals like Grace Jones and Grace Lee Boggs, Beck pushes symbolic and transgressive dimensions of texture, form, and color. This installation evokes a crowd of colossal figures, as though the human scale has been psychically amplified by its potential, love, pride, and power to connect.
Bianca Beck (b. 1979, Columbus, OH) earned a BFA from Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA and an MFA from Yale University, New Haven, CT. The artist has participated in exhibitions at Opelvillen Rüsselsheim, Rüsselsheim, Germany; V1 Gallery, Copenhagen, Denmark; the FLAG Art Foundation, New York, NY; White Columns, New York, NY; and Cheim & Read, New York, NY; among others. Beck is the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships, including the Helen Winternitz Award for Excellence in Painting at Yale University, New Haven, CT; The Ox-Bow School of Art Fellowship Program, Saugatuck, MI; and Artist-in-Residence at Complimenta, Ithaca, NY.