Aimée Beaubien lives and works in Chicago, IL. Her photo-based collages, sculptures and installations explore collapses in time, space, and place, while engaging the complexities of visual perception.  Beaubien experiments with perceptual shifts between the depicted and the touchable. Solo and two-person exhibitions include oqbo galerie, Berlin Germany; Gallery UNO Projektraum, Berlin, Germany; The Pitch Project, Milwaukee, WI; BOX 13 Artspace, Houston, TX; Johalla Projects, Chicago, IL; and Demo Projects, Springfield, IL. Group exhibitions include Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago, IL; UCRC Museum of Photography, Riverside, CA; Art Exhibition Link Castello di S. Severa, Italy; Bikini Berlin, Berlin, Germany; and Antenna Gallery, New Orleans, LA. Her work has been reviewed in publications such as Art in America, Art on Paper, and Art Papers. Beaubien is Assistant Professor of Photography at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Hothouse (detail of installation), 2015 cut-up inkjet prints, paracord, mason line, miniature, clothespins, grow lights dimensions variable

(sculpture on right) Rejoining Roger Brown – What’s happening now, 2015 cut-up pigment prints, c-prints, miniature clothes pins, candlestick, wooden table 59 x 22 x 20 inches | Hothouse, 2015 cut-up pigment prints, paracord, mason line, miniature, clothespins, grow lights dimensions variable

Growing Light Shadows (detail of installation), 2017 cut-up inkjet prints, vintage c-prints, paracord, carabiners, miniature clothespins, grow lights on fabric cord dimensions variable

Cuttings

I embrace the documentary capacity of the camera, recording what I encounter. Since its origin, photography has been used to capture, preserve, and accumulate information: arresting fleeting phenomena as visual records. My approach to photography is iterative, recombinant, and gestural. I ask questions that re-imagine photography. I explore generative and cumulative strategies of making, fascinated by the alterations of format, context, scale, experience and site.

Photographic paper is my sculptural material. Through it, I experiment with perceptual shifts between the depicted and the touchable. My images become printed photographs, then sculptural forms. Cutting, weaving and reassembling, I transform my photographs into complex sculptural interventions that disrupt the rectilinear format and traditional conventions of photographic display. These collage-based sculptures and installations are interative, growing and altering within new architectural contexts.

My recent work reflects on the garden and the photograph as parallels: aesthetic spaces where the impulse to collect confronts ephemerality, and taxonomic order meets unpredictable elements. In my garden installations, cut forms interweave, encircle, and hang; trail in ribbon-like shreds; and become wild ornamental outgrowths mapping associations between the garden, the ephemeral, and the photographic.

I am captivated by many different types of collections, from the significant objects curated and presented by museums to idiosyncratic displays in homes. My photographs are often made in institutional exhibits of art and artifacts, in quirky home museums, in urban plant conservatories, and in my domestic space. I often allow everyday objects from my domestic space to become integrated into the structure of my sculptures and installations. I am fascinated by the translational spaces between image and material. Surrounded by suspended, propped, and perched objects, I reflect on our entanglements with the objects and images we collect.

Growing Light Shadows (installation view), 2017 cut-up inkjet prints, vintage c-prints, paracord, carabiners, miniature clothespins, grow lights on fabric cord dimensions variable

Growing Light Shadows (detail of installation), 2017 cut-up inkjet prints, vintage c-prints, paracord, carabiners, miniature clothespins, grow lights on fabric cord dimensions variable

Cuttings (detail of installation), 2017 cut-up inkjet prints, vintage c-prints, paracord, carabiners, miniature clothespins, grow lights on fabric cord, with dried lemons, limes, and plants dimensions variable

Cuttings (installation view), 2017 cut-up inkjet prints, vintage c-prints, paracord, carabiners, miniature clothespins, grow lights on fabric cord, with dried lemons, limes, and plants dimensions variable

Cuttings (detail of installation), 2017 cut-up inkjet prints, vintage c-prints, paracord, carabiners, miniature clothespins, grow lights on fabric cord, with dried lemons, limes, and plants dimensions variable

Gusts in the Hothouse (detail of installation), 2016 cut-up inkjet prints, paracord, miniature clothespins, grow lights, oscillating fan 5 x 5 x 7 feet

Winter Thicket (detail of installation), 2015 cut-up inkjet prints, yarn, pile of brightly painted furniture, glass bottles, ceramic jugs, dried lemons, dried limes, porcelain vase, shelf

Chitter-burst-tangle-swell (detail of installation), 2015 cut-up inkjet prints, wooden dowels, ceramic bowl, glass bottles, ceramic jugs, needle point foot stool, wooden table, and miniature clothespins dimensions variable

studio view, 2018, cut-up inkjet prints, paracord, carabiners, miniature clothespins, dried plant-life, wooden side table, enameled stool, ceramic whiskey jugs, book dimensions variable

studio view, 2018, cut-up inkjet prints, paracord, carabiners, miniature clothespins, dried plant-life dimensions variable

studio view, 2017 cut-up inkjet prints, vintage prints, ceramic whiskey jugs, china cabinet, glassware, collectible figurines, wind-up clock, lights, lamps, side tables, books, paracord, mason line, carabiners, wooden dowels, miniature clothespins dimensions variable

Hothouse Cuttings (installation view), 2018 cut-up inkjet prints, laser prints, paracord, carabiners, miniature clothespins, hammock swings, grow lights on fabric cord, dried lemons and limes dimensions variable

Hothouse (installation view), 2015 cut-up pigment prints, paracord, mason line, miniature, clothespins, grow lights dimensions variable

Twist Affix (installation view), 2017 cut-up inkjet prints, vintage c-prints, paracord, carabiners, miniature clothespins, oscillating fan, grow lights on fabric cord with dried gomphrena, eucalyptus, lemons, limes, and fallen acorns dimensions variable

Twist Affix (installation view), 2017 cut-up inkjet prints, vintage c-prints, paracord, carabiners, miniature clothespins, oscillating fan, grow lights on fabric cord with dried gomphrena, eucalyptus, lemons, limes, and fallen acorns dimensions variable

Tangled Sensations (installation view) 2018, cut-up inkjet prints, printed satin, grow lights, hammock chair swings, paracord, carabiners, dried plants-lemons-limes dimensions variable

Tangled Sensations (installation view) 2018, cut-up inkjet prints, printed satin, grow lights, hammock chair swings, paracord, carabiners, dried plants-lemons-limes dimensions variable

To view more of Aimée Beaubien’s work please visit their website.

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