The latest posthumous exhibition of Beverly Buchanan’s sculptures, paintings and drawings draws attention not just to the surfaces themselves – their distinct materialities merging into larger forms – but to the immanent meanings they contain. Best known for her model-like structures made of found wood mimicking vernacular cabins in the rural South of the United States, Buchanan’s largest range here is a startling reminder of the artist’s fluid and thoughtful abilities. Working across a broad matrix of media and genres, Buchanan’s entire output showcases multiple facets of what ‘doing things’ might indicate in the larger world.
Among several separate bodies of work is a set of small slabs – made of poured concrete, glaze and oyster shell tabby – laid out on a low dais in the center of the floor. Buchanan deployed these types of sculpture to discreetly but emphatically mark a series of sites containing unheralded racial histories – a kind of deliberately anti-monumental commemoration. The facades of these markers hint at the elaborate means of their creation, while indicating specific localities of supply. The artist’s output in coastal Georgia of concrete tabby, for example, relied on burnt oyster shells, reminiscent of what the enslaved laborers of 18th-century settlers used to build zonal structures there.
Around the slabs, several large paintings whose numinous imagery oscillates between abstraction and figuration. Impressively grand, they gently immerse viewers on a uniquely human scale, once again embodying the hallmarks of relatable anti-monumentality. Among these is Dear, California. 1971–76; its central stucco-like textures give way to a warm gradient of bright yellows and rich oranges that spill out beyond the edges of the paint. A selection of Buchanan’s later works – bright abstractions of flowers and foliage juxtaposed with small idiosyncratic figures and vessels – resonate with qualities similar to those of his small huts. They seduce with a glimpse of the kind of place-making environmental sculpture that Buchanan generated and positioned with exceptional care in the latter part of his life and career.
