Katherine Bernhardt
“La dolce vita”
The Glance Gallery is pleased
to present the first solo show in Italy by Katherine Bernhardt.
In her painting Katherine Bernhardt seems to bring a pantheon of ancestral and
primitive divinities to life. In actual fact, the build-ups and drips of colour
depict a gallery of personalities who are famous for a variety of reasons,
models and pop singers (from Kate Moss to Bjork, from John Galliano to Paris
Hilton). The timeless and somehow eternal dimension that these modern gods are
usually confined to by the masses, is emphasized by the almost always monochrome
backgrounds - often black - or crossed by symbolic motifs which evoke power,
success and hedonism, such as flowers in phallic shapes, firework explosions,
and logos of well-known commercial brands. The human figure is often dominated
by the same consumer products (jewellery, fashionable clothes, luxury
accessories). Wide streaks of eye-shadow and sensual lips enhanced with make-up
give the protagonists of the paintings a perturbing and primitive look, which
unquestionably reminds us of Kirchner's "Woman on the street" and Picasso's "Desmoiselles",
which are in turn indebted to African art. The expressionist anxiety that shows
through the nervous strokes with which the colour has been spread is toned down
by a strongly ironic approach. However, a critical attitude continues through
Katherine Bernhardt's aesthetics, which makes these works very different from
the iconography of consumer society offered in the past by Pop art. In that
case, in fact, we focussed above all on the image, on the superficiality of the
product, on the obsessive reproduction of the brand, on the "flatness" of the
consumer world. But the violence of form, the thick and aggressive brushstrokes,
and the clashing colours in Katherine Bernhardt's paintings aim to go beyond the
surface of the consumer article, offering a "gut" interpretation of it where the
point of view of the subject, always balanced between mirroring and idiosyncrasy,
plays an essential role. In the works in the exhibition, the representation of
the star-system that populates the glossy American magazines (an effort already
implemented by painters such as Alex Katz) is augmented by the desecrating and
distorting element of social controversy. That sensation of "civilisation's
unease" that was already perceived in expressionist painting between the two
world wars, in American Funk Art, in Chicago Imaginism, and in the irrational
attitude of Action Painting, is revived here. The same sense of the failure - or
the betrayal - of the humanitarian ideals taught by middle-class culture seems
to run through Katherine Bernhardt's painting. It does not represent an isolated
example but the confirmation of the rediscovery in North-American art not only
of painting and figuration, but also of a new national conscience, a sensitivity
towards the contradictions of a political, economic and social model that is
certainly hegemonic but perhaps by now unfit to deal with the complexity and
conflict of the contemporary world.
Luca Vona
Katherine Bernhardt - "La dolce vita"
Opening: June 10th h. 6.30 pm
Up to July 21st
Galleria Glance
Via San Francesco da Paola 48/E
10123 Torino-Italy
+39 3489249217