“West Coast Transformation #2” (1983) is a limited-edition serigraph on paper by Carl Beam that depicts a photographic negative strip with superimposed images collaged to form a critical dialogue of socio-political subjects related to histories of colonization further glorified through the space race. To the left of this depiction is a sequence of images of the space shuttle Challenger’s 1983 upward launch into orbit. Carl Beam constructs before us, five examples of directional power relations: the verticality of a Western logics of acceleration exemplified by the Challenger in flight, the laterally filmic movement of still images of a deer running away from the camera and viewer’s gaze, a drawing of an intersectional cross, autobiographical poetic writing, and an image of a figure staring directly at the viewer. Robert Rauschenberg’s “Signs” (1970), Eadweard Muybridge’s “The Horse in Motion” (1878), and Andy Warhol’s use of repetition typify an artistic comradery present in own Beam’s praxis and critical inquiry.

© Carl Beam / CARCC Ottawa 2024