Rice Public Art is pleased to announce Platform, a groundbreaking series of temporary, site-specific public art projects on the Rice University campus. Launching in October 2017, the Platform series invites contemporary artists to respond to artworks, architectural structures, and research at Rice University. Brooklyn- and West Texas-based artist Jarrod Beck will inaugurate this series with Origin, 135 degrees, a sculpture and performance which takes Michael Heizer’s massive monolithic work, 45°, 90°, 180° (1984), as its point of departure. Building on the Heizer sculpture’s history as a feat of engineering, Beck will work with the Rice community, hosting student workshops at the Moody and organizing collaborative performances, to build a temporary public sculpture that will remain on view through Summer 2018.

About the artist: Jarrod Beck has served as an artist-in-residence at Dieu Donné Papermill; MacDowell Colony; Fine Arts Work Center; Yaddo; Sculpture Space; Vermont Studio Center; Siena Art Institute, Italy; and the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation. He has created outdoor sculptures for Socrates Sculpture Park; Sara D. Roosevelt Park, New York; Calder Plaza Grand Rapids; and the Anti-Defamation League; with installations at Wave Hill; South Street Seaport Museum; Bemis Center for Contemporary Art; Instituto Cervantes; Rhode Island School of Design; Stony Brook University; Universidad Central de Venezuela; Cape Cod National Seashore; and the Provincetown Art Association and Museum. Beck received an M.Arch degree from Tulane University and earned his MFA from the University of Texas at Austin. His drawings are in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art. Beck lives and works in New York City and Terlingua, Texas.

Platform: Jarrod Beck, “Origin, 135 degrees” is made possible through the generous support of Russ Pitman (’58), with additional support from Marley Lott.