bio/text

Tad Beck received a B.F.A. in Photography from the School of Visual Arts, New York, in 1991, and an M.F.A. in Fine Art from Art Center College of Design, Pasadena, California, in 2003. He lives and works in Vinalhaven, Maine. Beck’s solo exhibitions include: the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, California; The Fisher Center at Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York; Samuel Freeman Gallery, Santa Monica; Marisa Del Re Gallery, New York; Nathalie Karg Gallery, New York; the Center for Maine Contemporary Art, Rockland; and Grant Wahlquist Gallery. Two-person exhibitions include collaborative works made with the artist Jennifer Locke at Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, California, and an exhibition with Diana Cherbuliez at Theodore:Art, Brooklyn. Group exhibitions include: the Wadsworth Antheneum; Fotofest International, Houston; Spritmuseum, Stockholm; the Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover, Massachusetts; the Portland Museum of Art, Maine; the Worcester Art Museum, Massachusetts; the Ogunquit Museum of Art, Maine; Apex Art, New York; Rupert Goldsworthy Gallery, New York; Debs & Co., New York; Castelli Gallery, New York; Jancar Gallery, Los Angeles; and Monte Vista Projects, Los Angeles. His work is in the collections of the Addison Gallery of American Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Wadsworth Atheneum, the Portland Museum of Art (Maine), the Worcester Art Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, and the Princeton University Art Museum.

statement

My work explores the possibilities of photography by exaggerating its inherent limitations. I often employ re-photography (making photographs of photographs), collapsing multiple images and multiple points of time into one; or I make photographs within the literal bounds of the camera itself, thus implying a physical constraint that is also a means to conceptual rigor. By doubling down on these basic attributes, I pursue the limits of photography as a medium and a form of inquiry, stretching its capacities in the tradition of the Modernist avant-garde.