Tyler Beard is a beachcomber. Not with flip-flops and a gold digging metal detector per se, but more as a man not watching where he is going. The man with his head down, taking the curvy, less direct route. He is always exploring, always scanning for something old, something of, something mysterious. Maybe it was assembled on line 8,000 miles away or hand crafted by some young cool cobbler in Bed Stuy. It’s an intimate relationship between him and the objects he finds. Sometimes it rides along in his pocket, sometimes held tight in hand. Sometimes it only lasts a few steps before being discarded, other objects make it a few days. Some last forever. These typically have certain unifying characteristics: they look weathered and well worn, they’ve lived their lives and seen a thing or two. Those found objects that make the cut are often indistinguishable from similar pieces created anew in Beard’s studio. They mix and match and mold, perhaps it’s sleight of hand, but when the shell game stops shuffling you cannot tell which is old and which is new and which has the pea underneath it. For safe keeping he arranges and rearranges all of his mementos in a modular cabinet. Somewhere between a domestic pantry and something from a natural history museum’s display storage, these simple sculptures transform. No longer a discarded, they are there for us to study, to compare, to decode their backstory. Beard makes us rethink what is inspirational and what is worth holding on to.