24 June 2025
A small reflection on Beth's work in Sight-read at A.P.T., as it's really sticking with me. The first thing that comes to mind is meeting and departing the surface—I'm struck by how subtly but powerfully the work holds moments in the tension between that feeling of arrival and departure. How there are spots of saturated boldness or accumulation or density that still seem just on the verge of escape or begin to disintegrate through proximate duplication/repetition. I think that relates to surprise, which I don't sense all that often through paint but certainly did in her work. I'm thinking of one moment in a particular piece (the name alludes me at the moment without the show checklist in front of me, note to amend this bit) where the sheer quality of the paper and the white wall it was mounted on combined to essentially camouflage two amoeba-like white forms oozing into the composition from the top right and bottom right corners. The effect was surprising both optically and conceptually, a collision introduced in an area I initially read as an open valve. In this way I was continually reminded of water; of how its surface can glint into obscuring flatness or become a translucent container for what moves underneath. And how there is a rhythm to water even when it is still, something natural and cyclical yet elusive and unpredictable.