Marieke Bernard-Berkel
Preludes
30 September - 5 November 2022
I am moved by fancies that are curled
Around these images, and cling:
The notion of some infinitely gentle
Infinitely suffering thing.
Preludes, T.S. Eliot
As in Eliot’s preludes, the paintings presented here, acid lined, and bulbous from the layered paintwork, finger at the edges of a fully-fledged realisation – a story that has not reached its arch. From photographs, Bernard-Berkel renders bucolic countryside scenes, dioramic panoramas in luminescent tones. Distorted into a toxic muddiness that itself gives way to new imaginings, the works become lurid, sublime warnings.
Marieke Bernard-Berkel (b. 1988) is a French-German artist living and working between London and Paris.
She received her MA Fine Art from Beaux Arts Paris in 2013. Recent group shows include at Radicants, Paris (2022), Paradise Row, London (2022) and PUBLIC Gallery (2022).
