HISTORY

Robert Beverly 

1979 - Seoul, Korea

I was born in 1979 in Seoul, South Korea.  My father was an international security consultant who traveled throughout East Asia during the 70’s trading and selling art, textiles and gemstones.  In 1980, a year after my birth, my family fled Korea as political refugees following the assassination of Park Chung-Hee. My mother, Ara Kim, was a student of theatre and would receive her MFA from Hunter College in New York.  She currently is a director and playwright in Seoul, and a professor of theatre at Sungkyunkwan University.  She is also an ambassador for Korean arts and culture and will present a performance at the Dionysus Theatre at the base of the Acropolis for the first performance there in over 2000 years.

My interest in the arts began at a young age as my father was a collector of Asian textiles, masks, pottery and sculpture and my step mother designed exhibitions for the natural history museum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. They had several shops in the House on The Rock, which housed the eccentric collection of Alex Jordan in a sprawling Frank Lloyd Wright inspired labyrinth. Later in life his travels through eastern Europe led to an interest in modern and contemporary art from mainly Eastern-Bloc countries.  He opened a gallery for a brief period in the late 1980’s to showcase the art of a small group of contemporary Russian painters that hailed mainly from Moscow, St. Petersburg, and East Berlin.  I would accompany him on these trips occasionally and came to know a group of bohemian painters that took great risks to have their work shown outside their homeland as public exhibitions of their work were not allowed.  Most of them practiced a form of political realism or psychologically based Neo-expressionism.  Many of the works were of high quality, and due to their political nature would often need to be smuggled out of the countries of origin which my father would facilitate.  Many of this group have been jailed for their critical and at some points radical political views.  

I was raised on a dairy farm in rural Wisconsin with my grandparents as my parents both worked internationally and traveled frequently.  In 1997 shortly after my high school graduation, I traveled to Australia to work with one of my fathers associates staking gold plots and prospecting in the Australian outback.   During this time I amassed a small collection of Aboriginal arts and crafts and also picked up an old 35mm Leica with which I document my months in the outback and subsequent travels throughout Indonesia and Asia.

After a year of traveling I came back to the states to pursue my education.  I had become a proficient photographer and on a drive through the Southwest had met a young curator involved with an institution named the Center for Creative Photography.  After looking at some of my prints she offered me a job, and as my gold funds were running low it seemed wise to accept.  

This would begin my five year tenure at the Center for Creative Photography.   Established in 1975 and located on the University of Arizona (Tucson) campus, it is a research facility and archival repository containing the full archives of over sixty of the most famous American photographers including those of Edward Weston, Harry Callahan and Garry Winogrand, as well as a collection of over 90,000 images representing more than 2,000 photographers. The center also houses the archives for Ansel Adams, one of the Centers founders and someone whom I was destined to work posthumously for.   It currently houses all negatives known to exist at the time of his death and for several years I would spend of great deal of my time huddled over an enlarger attempting to make accurate copies of his negatives and prints for research purposes.  

In the late 90’s photography had yet to gain full acceptance as an art form and as a result wasn’t of much monetary value to collectors.  Cindy Sherman had some success by the early 80’s and Jeff Wall was relatively well known in the art world, but by and large the market had a skeptical view of photography as an art form.   A pocket of interest was forming around alumni and students of the Kunstakademie Düsseldorfin Germany.  Bernd and Hilla Becker had began producing their Typology series in the 60’s and 70’s and the school would graduate some of the most renowned photographers of our time, Andreas Gursky, Thomas Struth, Thomas Ruff and Thomas Demand to name a few.  Interest was relatively minimal at that time regarding some photographers that would go onto become icons of the medium like William Eggleston, Robert Heinekin and Richard Avedon.  This relative lack of value and interest resulted in my ability to work closely and hand on with original prints, unique photographic books, and negatives of artists like Cindy Sherman, Ansel Adams, Gary Winogrand, and Edward Weston. I was also able to assist in the curation of shows by Vik Muniz, Lauren Greenfield, Ansel Adams, Edward Weston, Richard Avedon, Robert Mapplethorp and Richard Misrach to name a few.

My first year at the center I worked extensively on the publications of two monographs Ansel Adam's  At 100 and Gary Winogrand's 1964; two of the finest publications in print on these respective artists.  Shortly thereafter I found my way into the Center’s extensive darkroom.  I had come to run the photography departments darkroom also, and over the course of the first two years became a skilled darkroom technician.  In 2001 I was entrusted with a program to duplicate the negatives of Edward Weston and to make duplicate prints of Ansel Adam’s photographs using the original negatives to print from and the original prints as guides.  Ansel Adams was a relentless educator and it was his desire to make these materials available to students to work with hands on, a goal that was achieved by making duplicates of the originals.  This laborious and rewarding process would come to take up my last two years at the center and would perfect my technical printing skills to the level of master printer.

During my time at the Center I studied art history and studio art with an emphasis in photography and left with a major in both.  I enjoyed learning and being challenged by academics and would leave the school with a cumulative GPA of 4.0.  I was later accepted to Yale for graduate studies.

For the past 17 years I have worked in arts sales serving as a gallery director in Los Angeles. Through this position I have had the opportunity to learn the business side of art, and curate shows by internationally respected artists such as Ed Moses, Larry Poons, and Fred Eversley. 

Acting as an art director has allowed me to spend much of my time viewing immense amounts of work by thousands of painters, photographers and sculptors, travel to art fairs internationally, and to participate in and study contemporary art auctions.  I have had writing published in international publications such as ArtNews and Art In America.  Though I strive to keep the my practice as an artist and that of an art director separate, the two will always inform each other and I believe the dual experiences have offered me a unique perspective. 

MY STUDIO PRACTICE

My studio practice has been constantly evolving over the past 10 years.  Many of the earlier works take cues from my early photographic collages and I began using image transfers to create scenes on dyed papers.  The use of paper has always informed my practice, from chemically based printing papers used in the traditional silver gelatin darkroom, to papers dyed in tea and folded using techniques based on tie dying, Shabori fabric dying and paper marbling which was traditionally used in handmade books in the 18th and 19th centuries.  These techniques are coupled with more traditional methods of applying paint utilizing brushes, air brushes, and handmade trowels.   

My work has moved almost completely away from photographic techniques, and recent paintings are almost entirely abstract though an abstraction with ties to photography and popular culture.  I’m currently working on a series of large text based paintings from can labels and am also making very large paintings of aerial images from declassified drone strikes.  The densely layered pieces often function in the intersection of abstract art, representational art, and popular culture.  Paper is used throughout my process and is often folded, dyed, and marbled. I also use acrylics, image transfers, real butterflies and insects, and many other mediums in the work. I enjoy employing the use of many different types of mediums in a single work and experimentation and technology is used throughout my process.

INFLUENCES

I look at a lot of artists for inspiration. Some inform my studio practice and some I just admire.  I recently saw a Peter Doig in person for the first time in the Art Gallery of Ontario and was blown away.  Like many, I have admired his work for a long time.  I love the work of Mark Bradford and George Condo and I often look at their work when composing a piece.   I admire the work of contemporaries Julie Mehretu, Chris Ofili, Albert Ohlen, Stirling Ruby, and Adrian Ghenie to name only a few.   I am passionate about art history and have gained inspiration from many 20th century artists which I admire and revere.