Ericka Beckman: Power of the Spin

A filmmaker who came to prominence in the late 1970s, Ericka Beckman is considered a key figure of the Pictures Generation, a group of American conceptual artists who appropriated images from popular culture for the purpose of cultural critique. Distinct from many artists working in the medium of film, Beckman takes an emphatically handmade approach to her work, making her own props and sets, as well as elaborate preparatory drawings. Her practice deals with gameplay and systems, often adopting and subverting classic tropes like fairytales to challenge societal norms.

Power of the Spin features more than twenty of Beckman’s drawings, ranging from sketches and storyboards to large-scale finished compositions created at different moments throughout her career. These drawings are accompanied by the continuous screening of two new films by Beckman in the lower-level gallery. Stalk is an adaptation of the fairytale Jack and the Beanstalk, which was first presented as a live performance in Performa 2021. In this film, Beckman reimagines elements of this well known narrative to critique today’s industrialized agricultural systems, exploring the economic issues of late capitalism and its catastrophic impact on small independent farmers. Ericka Beckman: Power of the Spin also features a short film created for the exhibition entitled Study for Rapunzel-The Game, featuring an excerpt from John Zorn’s The Clavicle of Solomon