Kevin Beasley

Kevin Beasley is an artist based in Brooklyn, NY. He works with resin, foam, and found clothing to create sculptures that examine race and power in America, often embedding microphones to activate pieces through live performance and sound.

Kevin Beasley works his materials—resin, foam, found clothing—as they cure, a process that leaves traces of the artist's body while the sculptures reference the bodies that once inhabited them. His work examines power and race in American society. He embeds microphones and audio processors into sculptures, activating them through live performances that connect sound production to physical movement. His recent work acknowledges the complex histories of cotton production and his own connection to his family property in Virginia, with pieces like "The Road" functioning as monumentally-scaled resin "slabs" that incorporate raw Virginia cotton. Beasley explores how abstraction can bridge the gap between a figure and its signifiers, using lived-in garments to charge abstract works with explicit references to the body.