It’s only fitting that the buzz in Bedstuy, Brooklyn is centered around something that’s perfect for an unseasonably cold start to spring: A quilt.
With vibrant and eccentric textiles, the Richard Beavers Gallery has once again found the sweet spot between advancing an artform and ancestral reverence in its newest exhibit by Desmond Beach titled “The Weight of Joy.”
Desmond Beach has spent most of his career harnessing the power of Black beauty, Black pain, and Black history across multiple mediums. But in the recently opened “The Weight of Joy,” Beach sheds his skin of performance, sculpture, and mixed media in favor of familial textiles and frayed fibers. While Beach displays his skill with each stitch, he purposely includes inescapable imperfections to not only catch the viewer’s eye, but draw them into his own profound manner of storytelling.
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“Our healing is messy,” he said to me at the opening of his exhibition. “It’s frayed at the edges. It hurts. It’s painful. I felt it would be a disservice if everything was finely and neatly put away. We have to get to the healing.”
While quilts and quiltmaking are often associated with comfort, Beach uses this exhibition to focus more on the covering and protection offered by each effervescent mesh of fabric. He also uses the creative direction of distress to bridge the gap between viewing each work objectively and understanding the connected tissue of each thread.
“I want you to see the threads that are hanging, the work that went into the piece being constructed because I want you to have evidence of it,” said Beach. “That’s why I don’t put a back on them, because I want you to see the stitching.”
Beach’s work guides the viewer through a polaric range of emotion. Harmonious colors and composition allow passage through the lows of violence against Black bodies and coming face to face with your own mortality. However, other pieces present a joy so palpable that one can almost hear the music that some of the ancestors depicted in the artwork are dancing to.
“I want you to walk away feeling like you had an encounter,” said Beach. “Like you had a moment of reflection. The textiles make you think about your own family. Maybe it’s the gesture that someone is making or the expression on their face. I want you to feel like you walked into a sacred space. Like you walked into your grandmother’s living room or your grandmother’s room and you are being comforted and you are being loved, you are being held in this moment.”
Beach’s latest work offers a kaleidoscope of great impressionists. I immediately saw Monet or pillars of pointillism when taking a closer look at the elaborate stitching. But when I mentioned that parallel to Beach, he was quick to clarify his greatest influences, especially being guided by his grandmother.
“My practice is really rooted in ancestral technology or ancestral memory,” said Beach. “So when I’m in the studio working I just feel guided by them. So when I’m cutting some things off, something says ‘don’t cut that. leave that piece. Make it more frayed.’ And I feel like they are guiding me.”
Beach hopes his connection to those who paved the way for him is projected through the work in a way that leaves the viewer not only moved but fulfilled as well.
“The Weight of Joy” by Desmond Beach will be on display at Richard Beavers Gallery until May 24. For more info, visit richardbeaversgallery.com and desmondbeach.com.