Screen Test Works
2022 

The Screen Test works are from a series of technical printing tests made during a collaboration with the artist Kelley Walker, initiated during the production of the projects Hardbody Software, 2014 and Crystal Voyager, 2014. The paired objects themselves are tromp l’oeil images of collages produced together that were later transferred to sheets of polished copper. The work speaks personally about a collaboration with another artist and the curious replication of the collage elements onto a surface where the reflection of the viewer, errors in the printing process, and the transcription from one medium to another announces the artifice of the shift in medium. Here, traces of paint drips and glue in the original object are intermixed with the drips and smears from the print process used to apply pigment to the final work’s copper surface, confusing production artifacts with their facsimiles.

Titling Convention:

The date attributed to the work is the year of its first exhibition, which is separate from the date included in the work’s title. A final description of the work, for example one that would appear on a wall didactic in an exhibition space, might read: 

Screen Test (Walead Beshty/Kelley Walker, Hardbody Software [February 26/May 14, 2014, Los Angeles, California], 48 ounce C11000 Copper Alloy)
Inkjet print on polished copper
31 x 16 ½ inches each, 2 parts 

Here annotated:
Screen Test (Walead Beshty/Kelley Walker, Hardbody Software [February 26/May 14, 2014, Los Angeles, California] [title of original work], 48 ounce C11000 Copper Alloy [type of copper])
2022 [date of first exhibition]
Inkjet print on polished copper [media]
31 x 16 ½ inches each, 2 parts [dimensions]