Jarrod Beck, Origin, 135 degrees; procession with white nylon, steel, resin clay, graphite, 9' x 18' x 140'
Alumnus Jarrod Beck (MFA in Studio Art, 2007) is the artist in residency for the Moody Center for the Arts at Rice University from November 2017 - April 2018. His piece Origin, 135 degrees was commissioned by Rice Public Art, a temporary public art initiative in conjunction with Platform, their series of temporary, site-specific public art projects..
Launched in October 2017, the Platform series invited contemporary artists to respond to artworks, architectural structures and research at Rice University. Brooklyn and West Texas-based artist, Beck, inaugurated this series with Origin, 135 degrees, a sculpture and performance which takes Michael Heizer’s massive monolithic work at Rice, 45°, 90°, 180° (1984), as its point of departure. Building on the Heizer sculpture’s history as a feat of engineering, Beck worked with the Rice community - hosting student workshops and organizing collaborative performances. These workshopped efforts included participants carrying white nylon in a procession beginning at the Moody Center for the Arts to the Engineering Quad, where Heizer’s monoliths for Rice are permanently located.
The new work for Platform, Origin, 135 degrees, is a temporary public sculpture that is on view through May 2018. Peering through Origin’s 140-foot long steel cage, occupying more than 2,500 square feet, the viewer sees Heizer’s famous granite monoliths balance on concrete plinths above the grassy lawn. Beck as an artist trained as an architect, a sculptor and an installation artist whose works find creative ways to investigate the history and importance of a specific place, used materials on vast scales to overwhelm peripheral vision and to increase potential points of contact for the viewer. The lines Beck draws in space expand into fields and their position in relationship to the body is purposeful: engaging viewers by asking them to shift their weight, crouch and stretch to take in a piece.
“I didn’t want it to feel like I was completing the Heizers, because they’re complete,” Beck said in a Rice news release. “I wanted it to be pushed further so that you had the sense of a journey. I hope that a few people are grabbed by that.” But, he added with a laugh, “if they don’t make the connection, that’s okay.”