Martin Beck
FRONT International: Cleveland Triennial for Contemporary Art, USA
16 July – 2 October 2022
Launched in 2018, FRONT International is a contemporary art festival that takes place across Northeast Ohio in the United States. For its second edition, Phileas supported the participation of artist Martin Beck to present his piece Last Night (2014). In the video work, Beck takes inspiration from the American disk jockey David Mancuso, who began hosting regular dance parties at his home in New York from 1970 onwards. These Loft parties became a legendary model for many disco-era New York clubs. Last Night depicts each record Mancuso played at his last Loft party in 1984, from beginning to end, in the sequence he played them. The sequence amounts to 13+ hours of music that will play throughout the exhibition, presenting an epic journey through a particular night at a particular moment in time. It is the first collaboration between Phileas and the FRONT Triennial.
Martin Beck (born 1963 in Bludenz) is an Austrian artist who works across various media, including installation, photography, video, writing, sculpture, and drawing. His artworks often derive from research into the fields of architecture, design and popular culture. Beck has had solo and collaborative exhibitions at various institutions, such as Kunsthaus Glarus, Switzerland; Bergen Kunsthall, Norway; and Grazer Kunstverein. He additionally participated in the 10th Shanghai Biennale, 29thBienal de São Paulo and the 4th Bucharest Biennale.
