Project Room: Extraction & Equilibrium: Carsten Beck

Beck’s practice investigates the forms that emerge within negative space, translating them into abstract paintings on canvas. Drawing on a range of sources, this new series reflects the influence of long walks in the countryside, introducing shades of brown, green, and blue in a departure from his earlier monochromatic, city-oriented works. Each composition is organised through carefully balanced squares, rectangles, and lines, with the addition of colour functioning as a deliberate and considered element that complements the precision of his practice.

On these walks in nature, Beck takes photographs which form the inspiration for his works on canvas. This move from photograph to painting is a process of reduction; he draws from the visual material of his surroundings—such as the dense browns of earth or the clear blues of Nordic skies—but removes narrative and descriptive detail. What remains is a condensed, abstracted field he describes as a “distilled terrain.” Departing from the monochromatic restraint of his earlier exhibitions at RHODES, these new works introduce colour as a key architectural element. Here, colour operates as mass: weighted, spatial, and central to the construction of form. The distillation of nature into abstract shapes demonstrates the basis of his work in function rather than ornamentation, in a style that feels distinctly mid-century modern.