Hudson Franklin Gallery
508 West 26th Street, Suite 318, 212-741-1189
Chelsea
April 5 - May 5, 2007
Reception: Thursday, April 5, 6 - 8 PM
Web Site
Themes of shelter and security once again dominate Michael Bernstein’s work. In this exhibition, he has taken the visual vocabulary of his ink-on-paper drawings - which have included bunkers, sandbags, trenches, and odd structures - and extended it into imaginative free-standing forms.
New drawings on Mylar give a striking new setting for Bernstein’s vision of bunker security. Also two-dimensional are handmade, brilliantly colored quilts of abstract designs that Bernstein has created using discount-store tarps.
Made in the same bright colors, sandbags form three-dimensional barriers that provide metaphysical protection to the viewer. Mimicking the sandbags, nylon laundry bags with a Stars and Stripes design are filled with washed-and-folded clothing to create a barricade that hints at the current fluctuations of American national pride. And a sculpture constructed of wooden dowels resembles a log cabin built by a rustic Modernist.