Mary Newton Gallery recently talked to Victor Berezovsky about his latest work in Splinter. The exhibition comprises nine paintings on marine hoop pine that are painted, carved into, chiselled, cut, and drilled.
MNG: Your work used to be quite figurative but has slowly become more abstract. What interests you about abstraction?
VB: Yes it’s true that on the face of it my work has become more “abstract”. However I would say that my position has always been one of abstracting rather than heading towards the abstract. For me the term abstract is an absolute and near impossible position.
Ilam taught in a modernist tradition. Therefore underpinning all of my work are formal and plastic considerations. However in relationship to this are ‘figurative’ possibilities or dialogues. Over the years I have processed and abstracted from life. This process of drawing in and out has been cyclic.
These days the way I draw in new information has become more subtle and vague. Currently I need less concrete stimulus for the works to develop. In this sense the works are more abstract. Also I think it is easier for viewers of my current work to place the work as abstract as it definitely overlaps with visual language previously used or assigned to abstraction.
I would hope however that viewers review my current work in light of what has gone before it. It is the ability of this current work to echo and resonate with this past that interests me.
MNG: Your previous series, Dacha, incorporated drilled holes in patterns and added playful elements to the surface. This new work has a lot of cutting, drilling, chiselling and general attacking of the surfaces. The chiselling and chipping away of the wood lends texture as well as a painterly aspect to the process - is this your intent or what was your intention?
VB: When I first started the wood paintings for Dacha I initially set out to respond to the grain of the wood as it was pretty beautiful. The marks also reminded me of my visceral stained sheet works done in 2000. However I quickly found the results to be contrived and constraining in developing forms.
By chance a solution was brought about by finding a box of wooden peg board toys. I spend a period of time drawing on these objects and then set about drilling up the unresolved wood stretchers in a similar fashion. They immediately set up a modernist framework against the organic markings.
I liked the idea of subverting this framework by sticking wooden pegs into it or by painting the surface. In this sense the holes became architectural anchor points from which I set about contradicting or reinforcing. Importantly the holes also gave me a tool to refresh the surface when it became too skin-like or rigid due to using acrylic paint.
In a similar fashion the cuts of the new work have partially being used as a tool to refresh the surface. Sometimes I would erase what was there and sometimes it was used to make form directly. A similar approach was used in my “Marked” series in 2003. The use of cutting or scoring was employed at different times in the history of the work. The marks became imbedded into the surface and often these marks or colours were dug out or raised to the surface latter depending on what the works needed. A friend aptly used the word “accrued” to describe how forms are made in my works. I think this is a very good word to summarize the Splinter works.
MNG: Can you say something about the imagery? It's quite hard-edged but dissolves and becomes more organic in places?
VB: As some of the titles of the works suggest, the works contain or trace a level of struggle in achieving their shape. At times I found myself lost and then suddenly a single decision brought a clear and definite surge to a conclusion. What is it that determines this final point? I would say that is no one thing determined it. Rather it was the embodiment of all the working that had gone into making the history of the work.
History is often related by certain key images or symbols. These images sit at the surface of the event though their making is often underscored by the smaller events that have unfolded beneath its surface. I suppose I wanted my work to contain this meshing and rupturing of surface and show what lay beneath it.
In terms of the shapes that make up or comprise my work I would say they are a synthesis or echoing of prior forms - that is, the more organic Grotto series and the more structural Bobble series.
MNG: And the palate? What was your thinking behind the choice of colours, this exploration of greys?
VB: I usually work in high key colours when starting a work. However in the end I slowly introduced greys to subdue the palate and isolate areas of colour. I suppose in some ways the grey conveys a slightly industrial feel to the work which in turn is reinforced by the more structural forms and holes.
When I started this series I was reading about how the gulag system in the Soviet Union was used to mine regions. At some point I introduced gold and silver in response. I liked the idea of embedding these precious metals into the layers of the work and then at some point striping them back.
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