CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 5/9/2018

Kevin Beasley opens at ICA Boston

Untitled (...just watch) (2015) is reproduced from the ICA Boston's new Kevin Beasley monograph, published to accompany the artist's major solo show opening today. In this work, Ruth Erickson writes, "a Nautica rain jacket stands on the floor… The jacket, which was Beasley's in high school, appears to deflate from top to bottom. The sculpture is roughly the height of a child, coming up to the waist of an adult viewer standing before it. The shrouded face and apparent exhaustion of breath below the neck elicits a sense of death, of life squeezed out; the bottom of the jacket pools lifelessly on the floor." This work was produced the same year Eric Garner and Tamir Rice were killed by police, and three years after Trayvon Martin was killed by neighborhood watch coordinator George Zimmerman. "Beasley's sculpture is not a response to any one instance of murder or brutality," Erickson continues, "but rather an evocation of a bodily state, a passing in plain sight. The work's title, just watch, could be read as a call to witness. Perhaps we are called out of resignation to the inevitable: 'Just watch.' Perhaps this is an instruction to watch our backs. Or maybe this is a pointedly taunting response to our utter disbelief."