Peninsula Museum of Art
Twin Pines Art Center
10 Twin Pines Lane
Belmont, California 94002
650.654.4068

Peninsula Museum of Art
copyright 2004

"Bruce Beasley: Monumental"

June 15 - August 31, 2008

About Bruce Beasley

Bruce Beasley is one of the foremost sculptors in the United States today. Beasley's interests in natural science and technology inspire him to construct dynamic sculptures which simultaneously expand into and envelop space. Bruce Beasley maintains that delicate balance between art and science in his work. A sophisticated, three-dimensional modeling program enables him to experiment with variations of an idea before actually building the components.

Beasley's manipulation of technology in the service of aesthetics has brought him international acclaim and inclusion in prestigious museum collections the world over. His sculptural works reside in the permanent collections of: Museum of Modern Art, NY; Guggenheim Museum, NY; Pompidou Museum, Paris; National Museum of American Art, Washington, DC; Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco; Seattle Art Museum; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Mannheim Museum of Art, Germany; Islamic Museum, Cairo; and many others.

In 2005 The Oakland Museum of Art honored Bruce Beasley with a 45-year retrospective of his work. The exhibition showed 75 works that span more than four decades of large-scale sculpture built in aluminum and acrylic, cast and fabricated bronze, stainless steel, granite, and wood.

A graduate of UC Berkeley, Beasley received attention very early in his career as work from his first show was purchased by the Guggenheim Museum of New York and by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Stanford Professor Albert Elsen, in his article on Bruce Beasley, states the following about his sculptures:

"They are about the beauty of formal structures invented by the artist and inspired by nature. From the considerable culture he brings to art, Beasley has drawn his inspiration from natural structures, rather than the built environment."

"Science and the microscope have changed the modern artist's understanding of nature as shown by Beasley's explanation: "The major source materials for me are what I call the building blocks of nature. People tend to think about natural forms as tree bark, waves, the bodies of animals, or people, but much more basic forms of nature are crystalline structures, molecular building blocks and bones. I'm very interested in the way nature refines things down to very simple forms, and how it puts things together."

Curatorial Notes

Bruce Beasley is an "I wonder . . ." and "what if?" kind of guy, willing (eager) to take risks to create outstanding art, an obvious choice for a solo exhibition in the Peninsula Museum of Art.

Beasley chose his path in the 60's and 70's when he invested his time, talent, and resources to solve the problem of casting large acrylic sculpture without bubbles or clouding, something Dow Corning itself could not do. One of the photo panels on display includes a photograph of Beasley standing almost inside the autoclave that he adapted for the process.

Two cast acrylic sculptures are included in this exhibition, neither of them "monumental" but both exquisite: "Light Cube" and "Scalar Gyration". "Light Cube", sixth and final casting in an edition of six, is on loan from Peninsula collectors; "Scalar Gyration" (1972) is still in the artist's collection. They clearly relate to each other, with "Light Cube" featuring flat planes and straight edges and "Scalar Gyration" taking the same idea and morphing into seductive fluidity.

Then Beasley turned to steel, and later bronze. His shapes evolved into neo-geometric combinations of cubic forms that intersect at anything but right angles. These intricate joins sent him searching for a way to design and then create patterns to facilitate the cutting and fabrication of steel and then the casting of bronze. The answer was adaptation of aeronautical engineering software.

"Now Beasley can work out designs on his computer, use a Rapid Prototype machine to produce a model in plastic, and when he is satisfied with the design, the next step is to produce computer-generated patterns for fabrication. A plastic model of "Gathering of the Moons" (created in stainless steel and recently installed for the Beijing Olympics) is included in this exhibition. Beasley is one of only 20 international sculptors chosen by the China Sculpture Institute to create monumental work for the Olympics.

This exhibition also honors "Destiny", a 73-foot-tall steel sculpture that was installed in the City of Monterrey, Mexico, this spring. "Arpeggio", a bronze sculpture in the exhibition, is a pedestal-size version.

Several other bronzes are included. Two suggest landscapes ("Precursor" and "Seaborne") and one, "Tower of Silence II", does indeed evoke a commemorative tower.

The Museum is particularly interested in the creative process, and is therefore especially pleased to include a number of panels with photographs that illustrate the realities of creating and installing monumental sculpture.

Ruth von Jahnke Waters

"The Language of Sculpture"

The language of sculpture is mute and silent.

The vocabulary of sculpture is shape and emptiness. It has a unique syntax and grammar that explores the limits of the physical world and the limits of our imagination. It is a language that can speak of the mystery as well as the reality of the physical world. It is the only language that can speak of our emotional relationship to the physical world. It can speak of the mystery of the border of the sky and the sea. It can speak of the alliance of the mountain, the plane, and ourselves.

This visual language has been deep within us from the beginning of our species. It is a part of our collective memory. It is a language that anyone who wants to can understand. But it is not a language that can speak of everything in our world or our experience. It is a language that is rich, but not precise. It is emotional, not rational, and the truths it can speak cannot be subjected to analysis or rational verification.

It is not fragile language, but it can be drowned out by words that distract the visual-emotional receptors of the brain and annoy the consciousness into the necessity to listen to the syntax, grammar, and vocabulary of the written or spoken word. These written or spoken words can carry very real and important truths of their own, but they cannot carry the truths that the language of sculpture can.

If we teach people to hear words when they see sculpture, then they will become deaf to this singular language. And such is a loss to them because it is a unique language that has spoken to mankind so long, and so richly

Bruce Beasley
Oakland, California

Museum hours are Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday from noon to 4 p.m., Saturday and Sunday from 1 to 4 p.m. For tours and appointments, please call 650.594.1577.