Beth Letain

Peres Projects is pleased to present Dumbbell, an exhibition of new work by Beth Letain (b. 1976 in Edmonton, CA).

Pursuing visual experimentation, Dumbbell builds upon Beth Letain’s ever-expanding methodology. Faced with the boundlessness of abstraction and fascinated by the possibilities contained within limitation, both in materials and in visual composition, Letain develops idiosyncratic systems and structures as a way of charting her field of action. While drawing from a deliberately limited pictorial language, made up of interlocking geometric shapes and saturated colors bouncing off a gesso ground, her work is anti-formulaic, and it is with a certain humbleness, imbued with playfulness, that she revisits the principles of her practice.

Dumbbell is an exercise in process, where Letain draws upon a shared vocabulary of elemental forms such as squares, stripes, bars, and circles, and reconfigures them into a unique visual poetry brimming with emotional nuances. Myriad pairings of shapes and colors burst forth, which she permutes and rearranges, shifting them around until they fall into place in a way that, just like the combination of a safe, unlocks new ways of seeing.