I'm making work because I have to. I come from a lineage of workers, it's all I know.
The act of dissassembly and repair is my way of coming to know; I’m attempting to make the unfathamoble accessable using painting, drawing, and sculpture, as visual language. I’m interested in the significance of the ordinary; when broken down to its bare essentials the simplist items, actions, and ideas become incomprehensible. A memory from an old chair, The swing of a hammer or, the act of consumption.
Painting and drawing become a means of recording. I arrive at an image using a build-up and removal of marks. Each brushstroke is a depiction of light going across a form. Each line is notetaking how a subject activates a space. Using sculpture I follow a procedure of examination, deconstructing, and reconstructing a form. There are hidden through lines concelead in the oblique; intersections of our lived experiences that these mediums reveal.
Artist Bio
Josue Bessiake is an Ivorian-American visual artist with an interdisciplinary practice concentrating in painting and drawing. His work is a visual diagram of his need to understand.
Bessiake uses various media to explore the ingredients of a phenomenon using the body as a conduit to reveal these hidden structures. Influenced by his experiece as a first generation immigrant his work reflects his desire to connect himself to his environment. In a process involving reassembly, experimentation, and collection, Bessiake’s work is a collision between practicality and abstraction making references to scale, memory. and collective consciousness.
Bessiake has presented work at the National Gallery of the Bahamas, Chautauqua School of Visual Arts, and Massachusetts College of Art and Design. Recent Exhibitions include solo exhibits at Hallspace Gallery Gallery NAGA Boston, MA, Gallery Kayafas Boston MA, and the University of the Bahamas. Bessiake received a BFA from Montserrat College of Art and is a recipient of the William and Ruth Fusco Prize to Encourage Artistic Achievement from Montserrat College of Art and a finalist for the AXA Art Prize at the New York Academy of Art.
Contact
Email:
josuebessiake@gmail.com
Instagram:
@josuebessiake