Charlotte Becket lives and works in New York City where she is an Associate Professor at Pace University. She attended Hunter College’s MFA program and received her BFA from the Cleveland Institute of Art. Solo and two person exhibitions include Valentine Gallery NY, Crisp Gallery in London, LEAP in Berlin, Taxter and Spengemann in New York City as well as group exhibitions at Gazelli Art House in London, Gasser and Grunert, Anna Kustera, NY Studio Gallery, Passerby and the Invitational Exhibition Academy of Arts and Letters in New York City. She has been invited to lecture on her work at various galleries and universities and has been the recipient of grants from The New York Foundation for the Arts, Socrates Sculpture Park, The Joan Mitchell Foundation, The Tony Smith Foundation, and the Verizon Foundation. Her work has been reviewed in The New York Times, TimeOut London, ArtForum, and Art in America, among others. She was recently included in, 100 Artists, a compendium of interviews with 100 international contemporary artists by Francesca Gavin.
Artist Statement
Our environment is one where automation, information, consumerism, progress and erosion are collapsed into a muddle that both celebrates and questions its status quo. The mechanical sculptures I construct explore the complexities of this ambivalence through errant machinery, polished forms that collapse and resume composure, and illuminated projections or screens that depict only the looping and chattering mechanisms behind them. The work aims to imbue these absurd and irrational scenarios with a pathos, humor and aesthetic seduction so as to draw out a conversation about our own relationship to speed, progress, technology and survival within perpetually fracturing and rearranging circumstances. The work’s looping, rhythmic motion transforms the sculptures from motorized machines to figural abstractions or landscapes. The mechanization in these pieces work in opposition to what we demand of the mechanized world around us. It seeks to offer something else, something that is slow and inefficient but more closely aligned with our selves.
