Kevin Beasley’s Raw Materials | Art21 “New York Close Up“

Does the past have a sound? Celebrated for his material-oriented practice, Kevin Beasley juxtaposes sound, silence, and sculpture to examine the legacy of cotton in the American South. Set to the beat of his improvised drumming, the film shows Beasley at work in his Queens studio finishing his multipart exhibition, “A view of a landscape,“ at the Whitney Museum of American Art—his most ambitious work to date. The installation is centered around the motor of a modern cotton gin—a machine originally invente