Gina Beavers (b.1974; Athens, Greece) creates sculptural paintings that explore the digital landscapes of our everyday lives. Drawing on images taken from Instagram, YouTube, image databases, and other online sources, she creates thick, tactile paintings that capture, in deeply visceral ways, the curated and often superficial nature of our digital lives. By examining the ubiquity and uniformity of certain types of images—from our selfie culture to our obsession with “food porn”—Beavers also highlights the ongoing flattening of identity and individuality through an unspoken but seemingly mutual agreement on what constitutes beauty, happiness, and a life well lived. Within her process, Beavers’ conceptual and formal interests converge, as she looks to push the possibilities of paint to its sculptural height while also subverting the flatness of the digital image back into three dimensions. Beavers’ ongoing play with notions of reality and physicality provides a dynamic platform through which to consider wider cultural and social dialogues. Her work has been presented in solo exhibitions at galleries including Michael Benevento, Los Angeles; GNYP Gallery, Berlin; Carl Kostyal, London; James Fuentes, New York; Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, New York; Cheim and Read, New York; and Canada Gallery, New York, among others. In March 2019, MoMA PS1 opened Beavers’ first solo museum exhibition, Gina Beavers: The Life I Deserve, which is accompanied by the artist’s first monograph. Her work has also been included in group presentations at Kentucky Museum of Contemporary Art, Louisville; Nassau County Museum of Art, New York; Flag Art Foundation, New York; William Benton Museum of Art, Connecticut; and Abrons Art Center, New York. Beavers holds a BA in Studio Art and Anthropology from the University of Virginia (1996), an MFA in Painting and Drawing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2000) and an MS in Education from Brooklyn College (2005). She currently lives and works in Newark, New Jersey.
GINA BEAVERS