Walead Beshty (b. 1976)

‘The FedEx boxes are shatterproof safety glass. The glass boxes are built to size of the shipping boxes, then they’re allowed to travel and in that travel they go through the standard forces that would happen in transit.  And that creates shattering patterns or cracking patterns on the box.  So essentially the form is directly tied to the movement of the work and how the work is seen in different locations. They are built to the size of a standard FedEx box. The boxes themselves are a proprietary volume owned by FedEx, in other words DHL or UPS are barred from using the exact same size and shape, so they are basically a unit of space that’s owned by a corporation, within which to ship objects. Each time that’s shown, it’s placed back in the box and shipped again so ostensibly it could accumulate form in perpetuity. And in a similar sense to the photographs, which the forms on their surface are what people see as an abstraction which comes from the movement through x-rays, these acquire movement via FedEx’ W. Beshty.