A New Chapter in Bianca Beck's Art: Tender Visions at Maine Contemporary Art

Bianca Beck, the artist known for bold, jubilant sculptures that celebrate queer culture with electric colors and confident postures, has embarked on a profound artistic evolution. The Center for Maine Contemporary Art in Rockland is hosting Beck's solo exhibition, "Bianca Beck: Eyes," running through September 6.

The exhibition marks a striking shift in Beck's work. Where earlier pieces commanded attention with their sheer scale and confrontational presence, the new collection introduces an unexpected gentleness—a vulnerability that critics attribute largely to Beck's experience of pregnancy and childbirth, which coincided with their declaration of nonbinary identity.

" Beck's exhibition is an expression of a profound humanism in an inhumane time," reads the show's statement, a sentiment that underscores how timely this body of work has become amid ongoing assaults on nonbinary and trans identities.

The 2026 sculpture "Each star a sun / Neon white" exemplifies this new direction. Crafted from papier-mâche, wood, steel wire, and paint, its fetal form invites contemplation rather than confrontation. Similarly, "Stardust we breathe / Skin we shed" presents a head profile that echoes anatomical diagrams while housing brain, eyes, and trachea in unexpected arrangements—a meditation on physical composition and cosmic connection.

" We are stardust / We are golden," Beck seems to affirm through titles and forms, echoing Joni Mitchell's iconic lyric. The artist explores how elements forming human bodies originated in supernova explosions, suggesting that our surface identities—the "skin" we present to the world—age and die while the fundamental substances of our being persist eternally.

Faces populate virtually every piece in the exhibition, including the 2024 paintings "Blue and Not Blue" and "Comes a Time," which depict singular faces backed by multiple others. These layered compositions speak to the infinite identities dwelling within each person. The 2021 work "See Me Plural," featuring six eyes, predates Beck's public nonbinary revelation, indicating that questions of selfhood have long animated their creative vision.

Eyes appear throughout in unusual placements—sometimes six to a face, sometimes in unexpected locations—serving as windows to souls that refuse singular definition.

The exhibition draws from diverse sources: Plato's Symposium origin myth, in which humans originally possessed two heads, four limbs, and three sexes before Zeus split them in two; intersectional feminist theory; and the unapologetic energy of queer icon Grace Jones.

The Center for Maine Contemporary Art, located at 21 Winter Street in Rockland, is open 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Saturday and noon to 5 p.m. on Sundays.