The next exhibition at Nancy Hoffman Gallery will be “Painted Photographs,” by David Bierk, including over 20 photographs of the landscape painted with oil. This is the first time these works will be exhibited publicly. The show is the fifth posthumous exhibition of the artist’s work at the gallery. The exhibition opens on March 17th and continues through April 19th, 2007

David Bierk, Glen Sutton Field, to Monet, 1990,
oil on photographs on canvas, 40 1/2 x 100 1/2 inches
*click any image to start slideshow*

Bierk loved the landscape, the earth and sky, which he painted over and over during the years of his life, always with a signature glowing golden sky. Perhaps of all his subjects, the landscape was nearest and dearest, the most intensely personal, the most fraught with feeling, the broadest palette for his sumptuous and rich brush filled with oil, and the vehicle through which he could express his dismay at the devastation man wielded to his own most important resource. Bierk called his landscapes “the heart of his creative output.”

Bierk’s landscape paintings have a signature look: the sky is more dominant than the land, often occupying the top three-quarters of the painting. It almost always glows a golden yellow at the horizon, and rises in a symphony of colors to the top. Colors such as greens, turquoises, mauves, browns fill the canvas or structure on which the work is painted. These are not azure blue skies, they are charged atmospheric spaces, almost abstract paintings. Bierk’s feelings about the earth and the landscape were intense and he shared them with the world in his paintings. They were powerful, moving, heart-wrenching and sublime paintings. In his painted photographs, one views Bierk’s intensity in the “camera-captured moments” that look like Bierk paintings even in the landscape image itself.

Mississquoi River, Vernont, 1990, oil on photographs on canvas, 28 1/2 x 38 1/2 inches

Bierk’s painted photographs spring from the same source as his paintings, the interest in where land meets sky, where mists and clouds conceal, where water reflects land and sky, trees and flowers. They are based on photographs he took on his travels through-out this country and Canada. He photographed in panoramic format, mounted the images on canvas or board, and painted into and beyond the photographic border to create a complete image. Thus, the images are part “real” and part imagined from the artist’s hand and mind.

Bierk worked on this body of painted photographs from 1989-1992, well before many artists began to manipulate photographs, use multiple images, or apply paint to their surface. Each image is unique as a photograph, and each unique in its application of paint, each varnished to a shimmering, glistening surface. The combination of materials expresses contemporary concerns between ideas of nature and culture, originality and appropriation, tradition and modernity.

In her catalogue essay for an exhibition entitled “The Painted Photograph,” at the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography in 2005, Andrea Kunard writes:

“The photograph component [of Bierk’s work] represents mechanically created imagery: a type of image-making that the German philosopher Walter Benjamin has declared challenges an art work’s claim to uniqueness, authenticity, and “aura.” Once made, Bierk places the photograph within a setting painted in a highly poetic and romantic manner. On one level this combination of painting and photography addresses the nostalgia of our times for the traditional painting styles of previous centuries. On another it demonstrates how classic styles have been transformed, creating a multi-layered, complex statement about visual imagery and modern approaches to making art.”

David Bierk was born in Appleton, Minnesota in 1944. He received both a B.A. and an M.A. from Humboldt State University, Arcata, California. He also attended California College of Arts and Crafts, Oakland.

David Bierk’s work has been widely shown throughout the United States and Canada at The Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Ridgefield, Connecticut; Binghamton University Art Museum, Binghamton, New York; Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography, Ottawa; Dayton Art Institute, Ohio; Evansville Museum of Arts, Science and History, Indiana; Flint Institute of the Arts, Michigan; Samuel P. Harn Museum of Art, University of Florida, Gainesville; Hunter Museum of American Art, Chattanooga, Tennessee; Katonah Museum of Art, Katonah, New York; Las Vegas Art Museum, Nevada; London Regional Art and Historical Museum, London, Ontario; University of Massachusetts, Amherst; Memorial Art Museum, Rochester, New York; MoMA extension at Pfizer, New York, New York; Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, Alabama; New York Academy of Sciences, New York, New York; Telfair Museum of Art, Savannah, Georgia, among others, as well as many corporate and private venues.

His work is included in many public collections, among them Art Gallery of Algoma, Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario; Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, British Columbia; Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; Art Gallery of Peterborough, Ontario; Art Gallery of Windsor, Ontario; Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography, Ottawa; Canadian Postal Museum, Ottawa; The Dayton Art Institute, Ohio; Evansville Museum of Arts, Science and History, Indiana; Knoxville Museum of Art, Tennessee; Museum London, London, Ontario; Macdonald Stewart Art Centre, Guelph, Ontario; Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, Alabama; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; City of Peterborough, Ontario; Tom Thompson Memorial Art Gallery, Owen Sound, Ontario; as well as many corporate and private collections.

The artist was named Artist-in-Residence by the Canada Council, St. Catherines, and the Canada Council, North Bay, Ontario. He received the Queen’s Golden Jubilee Award (posthumous) and three grant awards from the Canada Council.

For information and/or photographs, please call the gallery at 212-966-6676 or e-mail at info@nancyhoffmangallery.com.