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Face time
Katherine Bernhardt's portraits and imaginary landscapes burst with color and chaos.
By ROBIN EISGRAU
Offoffoff.com
Katherine Bernhardt's riotously colorful paintings are a fusion of glamour and chaos. Most of the paintings in this show are depictions of women in almost cartoon abstract primitive interpretations of images from glossy
fashion magazines.
"Nighttime Thong" (above) looks like an action-painting take on a
page from a Victoria's Secret catalog. The model, clad in lace rendered by
thick paint, stares out under the bold highlights of her hair.
"Bjork," we can assume, is a portrait of the singer wearing a milk-chocolate
pleated skirt with a horse at the waist and a white blouse that fades into
the background. She's there on the canvas, but only so much. This painting
seems to be making a comment on the singer's quirky character, her
unpredictability.
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| KATHERINE BERNHARDT |
Paintings by: Katherine Bernhardt.
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| SCHEDULE |
Team Gallery
527 West 26th St.
(212) 279-9219
Through Dec. 26, 2001
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"Blonde" is a portrait of a bespectacled woman wearing a
white dress with South American accessories and a wide umbrella of blonde
hair. She resembles Gloria Steinem a bit and has an air of serene authority,
kind of like a feminist ancestor painting.
In a change from the glamour
girls, in the front room is "Starr Scunt Campos," a group of multicolored
arches on a surface of heavy white brushstrokes. Near that is "Psychotic
Episode," a gripping portrait of a young woman's face that seems to be
melting with heavy black eye makeup and a choppy haircut. She clearly is the
face of post-punk anxiety. In the back roon is "Cher," a very abstract
portrait of the singer in which her long dark hair takes up most of the canvas.
Next to that is "When Hell Freezes Over" a very post-apocalyptic rendering
of the McDonald's golden arches against a spray-painted blue sky. This
landscape is barren except for commercialism, the artist seems to be saying.
Two heavy abstracted portraits, "Totally Insane" and "Pacman," are like punk
cartoons rendered with thick flourishes of color. They could be ghosts from
the Mudd Club.
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DECEMBER 12, 2001
OFFOFFOFF.COM • THE GUIDE TO ALTERNATIVE NEW YORK
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| IMAGE GALLERY |
Reader comments on Katherine Bernhardt:
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| • | comments from roger & Jane, Dec. 16, 2001 |
| | • | Re: comments from OG, Dec. 17, 2001 |
| | | • | Re: comments from Andrew White, Dec. 17, 2001 |
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| • | a print from Meghan, Jan. 13, 2002 |
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| • | comments from sangeetha, April 9, 2003 |
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| • | Power to the people from Nyl, Oct. 22, 2005 |
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| • | katherine bernhardt from corey miller, Jan. 30, 2007 |
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