ALEX BIERK | GENERAL HARDWARE CONTEMPORARY
Alex Bierk, Love and Tolerance, 2015, oil on linen, 15 x 18 inches.
In Alex Bierk's solo exhibition "Keepsake" at General Hardware Contemporary, the Peterborough-born artist's monochromatic oil paintings and watercolour works offer viewers striking depictions of selected memories of his life. He has rendered a wide variety of subject matter - a portrait of his wife, Chinatown at night, the back room of a church on Bloor St, the bedroom window from the house he grew up in, and a slogan from a twelve step meeting. These simple moments do not directly represent his past substance addiction and his recovery from it, but something arguably more powerful – the loss of time and the longing for it back.
Substance abuse and nostalgia are associative, as both can potentially be used as coping mechanisms in bouts of negative events or loneliness. “Any reference or lamenting done on my past I’d say deals with loss – not necessarily things lost due to alcoholism and drug addiction, although that’s a part of it, but more so a loss of youth and the shift in my life caused by the loss of both of my parents [at a young age]. That part of my life.” Now that Bierk is sober, he relies more heavily on nostalgia for lost moments and time.
Bierk brings a camera with him everywhere he goes in order to document moments and perpetuate memories. From his digital database of over 20, 000 images, he selects the photos that he chooses to paint through what he calls an "intuitive process." Some photographs are from 2006 while others, like the image of his brother Jeff in a barbershop, he took two weeks before the exhibition.
Using the Grid, a hyperrealist technique he was taught by his late father David Bierk, Alex breaks down the black and white photographs and the canvases into sections, pencils out the pictures within the correlated units, and paints the pieces with astonishing accuracy.
On first glance, the light cascading over the wood paneling or bouncing off a silver cross captures viewers’ aesthetic admiration. A moment later, the viewer realizes she has become a voyeur, transiently entering Bierk’s memory bank, and discovering his despair for being unable to remember past moments and his angst to never lose anymore.
These piercing portrayals of psychologically commanding glimpses into his past are just as much haunting as they are relatable. The pieces expose a yearning that develops within us with age: to cling longingly to small fragments of our past. As a powerful collective of modest moments, Bierk draws the viewers’ attention to the importance of taking the time to observe, remember and find pleasure in a routine context.
Alex Bierk: Keepsake is on at General Hardware Contemporary until March 14, 2015.
See www.generalhardware.ca for more information.
Alex Bierk, Window Series, 2014, oil on linen on panel, 15.5 x 13.75 inches.
Alex Bierk, China Town, entrance, 2015, oil on linen on panel, 18.5 x 13.5 inches.
Alex Bierk, Amanda Wearing a Black Dress, 2015, oil on linen, 14 x 10.5 inches
Alex Bierk, Chinatown at Night, 2015, oil on linen, 9 x 12 inches.
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