Sharing Space

Sharing Space brought together photographic and mixed-media works by György Beck and Sylvia Plachy at The Gallery at the University of Texas at Arlington, from 20 January to 14 February 2015. Longstanding friends who were both born in Hungary, the artists presented selections from their separate practices within a shared exhibition. Curator Benito Huerta connected their work through a poetic, frequently dreamlike sensibility, while emphasising differences in subject matter, materials and methods. 

Plachy’s photographs draw on encounters with people and places, using framing and focus to shape an individual perspective. Beck’s contribution explored more constructed approaches, combining and digitally reworking imagery while experimenting with printing techniques and surfaces. The exhibition announcement included his mixed-media work Hood, dated 2010, alongside Plachy’s Homeless in Chelsea, a silver gelatin photograph from 1985. Their juxtaposition established a dialogue between distinct ways of making and experiencing photographic images. 

Contemporary reporting in The Shorthorn described Beck’s experiments with liquid photographic emulsion and photographs attached to painted aluminium. These processes extend the photograph beyond a conventional print, making its supporting material part of the viewer’s encounter. Beck explained his continuing interest in moving beyond established artistic conventions. The exhibition therefore offered an opportunity to consider not only what a photograph depicts, but also how its construction contributes to its appearance and meaning. 

Audience participation was another dimension of Beck’s presentation. The work Share incorporated a keyboard with white spaces where visitors were encouraged to write or draw. This invitation introduced visitors’ marks into an artwork concerned with sharing, giving the exhibition title a practical expression. Read alongside his material experiments, the participatory work suggests an understanding of image-making that is not limited to representing a subject. Instead, surfaces, objects and the actions of viewers can become active components of the work and of the gallery experience itself.