Michael Beatty: Polysemy

The title of Michael Beatty’s third show with the gallery is “Polysemy”, which is defined as ‘the coexistence of many possible meanings for a word or phrase’.

Beatty’s sculptural works investigate a hierarchy of focus and support through a dialog between digital and handmade forms. Density and levity are sometimes obvious and sometimes hidden. Shapes repeat as patterns, yet are varied and altered. In this exhibition, architecture, art, nature and science balance each other within Beatty’s formal explorations.

“I see great psychological potential in object-making: the way in which objects transcend their function use to become placeholders of memory and contemplation.”

—Michael Beatty

The images one sees, the objects one uses and the way one navigates these are intermingled, in contemporary life.  Beatty’s work reframes this mix as forever alterable.  In the installation, The Garden of Algorithmic Delights as well as in individual works, “Polysemy” demonstrates how group and individual, alike and different, balance and topsy-turvy, are equally important in thinking about the world and how one engages with it.

“I’m interested in the intersection of science and mathematics, but more from a psychological or even philosophical point of view. Science can get very strange as we reach the limits of our understanding…”

—Michael Beatty

Michael Beatty received his MFA in Sculpture from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design in 1995. His sculptural works and drawings have been exhibited nationally and are included in the collections of the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard University, the DeCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, and numerous other public and private collections.  A recipient of grants from the Berkshire Taconic Artist Resource Trust, the Massachusetts Cultural Council and the St. Boltolph Foundation, Beatty has also been a Visiting Artist/Scholar at the American Academy in Rome and was awarded two residency grants at the MacDowell Colony in Peterborough, New Hampshire. He is currently an Associate Professor in the Visual Arts Department at College of the Holy Cross where he teaches sculpture and three-dimensional design.