Projects
"Elizavetgrad: I Remember"
Ken Berman’s multi-media exhibit “Elizavetgrad: I Remember” includes 20 oil paintings, works on paper, photographs, objects and an 18 minute film utilizing the artist himself as a contemporary symbol of a historic past; namely the immigrant experience in America. Elizavetgrad, now known as Kirovograd in the Ukraine, was the site of several progroms beginning in 1881. Berman's ancestors immigrated to America as a result and settled on Water Street in Worcester, Massachusetts around the turn of the 20th Century. 100 years later, little has changed for the largest wave of immigrants since that time.This exhibition speaks equally to all ethnic groups who came to America and fought for a better life.
The Immigrant Experience
Immigration has remained a fundamental concern in the American conscious since the Constitution was first interpreted as a means of determining true Americans. Immigrants played a key role in creating the American Dream in the early 20th Century. However, affluence, assimilation and distain for the difficult past eventually diluted identity and values. Greed, Ponzi schemes and "pay-to-play" practices have led to the most profound ethical and financial crisis since the Great Depression, while immigrants still face discrimination and undue hardship.
Berman's self portraits are alegorical. For example, "Screaming Cowboy" refers to the desire to assimilate and adopt popular mythology concerning the American West that proliferated in the Hollywood motion picture industry and TV programming in the 1950's. Stars like John Wayne and the Cartwrights of "Bonanza" became perfect role models of American culture. The strain of cruelty, determination and angst implicit in the immigrant's struggle to survive is painfully evident in Berman's series of wrestling paintings. "Looking Backwards" deals with ideas of passage and dissonance between past and present; between belonging/being inside and being an outsider.
Degraded Photocopies
In addition to the Immigrant subject matter, Berman's paintings explore the interplay between traditional painting and modern media. This further symbolizes the relationship of old world and new American values. Photocopies of old photographs have been degraded, reversed, reduced or enlarged, blurred, transferred onto canvass or paper supports and painted over to suggest potential loss of memory and the remnants as well as mutuation of identity. Glazes are sometimes applied to preserve images in a new painterly skin on the picture plane. This refers to and attempts to preserve historic technique and the signifigance of mark-making yet bypass the easy expressionism which pervades contemporary figure painting.
Film
Berman's film integrates digitized still photographs and 8mm film with special effects and works of the artist to strengthen the context in which they are seen. Personal and historic imagery fades in and out and reappears like motives in a dream. Mood shifts are intense as in a dream and are augmented by a sound track. The dreams sought and lost in the American immigrant journey over the last century are portrayed through pictures of Berman's ancestors and the artist himself.
Juror Rachel Vancelette, Director of the Barbara Gladstone Gallery in New York City, awarded the Richard M. and Elaine Rieser Prize to Ken Berman for "Screaming Cowboy" at the 51st Chautauqua National Exibition of American Art, June 29, 2008.
"Looking Backwards" will be on exhibit at the State Museum of Pennsylvania in Harrisburg June 28 to September 20, 2009 in Art of the State: Pennsylvania; the official, statewide, juried competition for Pennsylvania artists.
Solo exhibition venues and dates will be announced soon.
