CICA Museum, M Gallery
May 29 – June 2, 2024
2024.05.29 – 06.02
Artist Talk
작가와의 대화
일요일 2024.06.02. 1PM
Wings and Flutters
In my work, I attempt to create something that invokes an experience that is as powerful and felt as that which I may unexpectedly encounter in nature. The ephemeral and elemental experiences in nature serve as my spiritual guide to explore painting as a journey of discovery and invention.
The resulting works are fictions, existing as other, synthetic, alien, imagined worlds. Through the lens of the natural—the bombardment of technological advances and scientific imagery in daily life—impacted my understanding of self and place in the natural world. What we know and question through science changes my perception of geologic time, the biological and organic.
Understanding the natural process—phenomenon, science—conjures my imagination.
Science, math, and technology have continually reshaped humankind’s relationship to nature.
While each gives a rationale to the other, nature serves as a way for deconstruction and as a mediator. The elements of nature, in flux and change, decay and growth, become a metaphor for the process of painting. I am drawn to these elements which transcend time and place. I desire to reach a tipping point where the natural and artificiality of the made world are in symbiotic interplay, each consuming or subsuming the other.
Kevin Bernstein received his MFA from the University of Washington and his BFA from the RhodeIsland School of Design.
Exploring the interconnectedness of humankind, nature, and science, his paintings and works on paper have been exhibited throughout the United States and in the United Kingdom, Japan, and South Korea, at venues such as the Painting Center in NYC, CICA Museum near Seoul, Korea, Strohl Art Center in Chautauqua, New York, Katonah Museum of Art, New York, TARFEST in Los Angeles, and Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum. His work has been selected for numerous exhibitions juried by leading international curators and critics, including– Howard N. Fox (Los Angeles County Museum of Art); Samantha Rippner (Metropolitan Museum, NYC); Douglas Fogle (Hammer Museum, UCLA); Alma Ruiz (Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles); John Yau, Art Critic, and independent curator; and Shana Nys Dambrot, Arts Editor, LA Weekly. His residencies include a National Parks Artist in Residence, Centrum Foundation, Artist in Residence on Governor’s Island, NYC, and Brush Creek Foundation for the Arts.
He is currently Associate Professor and leads the painting area and serves as graduate faculty in the Department of Art at Kansas State University. Bernstein is included in the artist registry at The Painting Center in NYC and is a Los Angeles Artist Association member.
