Recent Work

Sedentary Pleasures

Vintage Work

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PHOTOTRANSFORMATIONS:

“The effect of using X-rays to create alter-ego experiences-doubling and reflecting back our identities and, in the process,making them seem less real- is uncanny and haunting, but also strangely beautiful. The piece I like best is “The Swimmer”. It conveys a struggle between staying afloat versus going under; between being alive and breathing versus skeletal and inert. But despite its seriousness, the struggle seems graceful and fluid”.
Jennifer Church, PhD (Philosophy), 2010

BY MARILYN BAUER, TCPALM NEWS, February 2010:

It is wonderful when artists (as they ofttimes do) donate work on behalf of a charity or to a collection. In the case of Irwin Berman, who has just concluded an exhibition at the Lighthouse Center for the Arts in Tequesta,FL, his donation of an oversize “photoradiograph” to the Palm Beach Photographic Center at 415 Clematis St. in West Palm Beach makes it available for our viewing “dis-pleasure.”

Although manipulated photography is not new, Berman’s technique results in a “Ghost Hunters” kind of creepy that will not let you look away.

Berman overpaints black and white photographs with viscous barium. The barium is floated and shaped over the photograph using brushes and small sculptural tools. The result is a hybrid of photo, painting and sculpture or — put another way — bas reliefs on photographic paper, bombarded with X-rays.

Berman says he is addressing what he imagines to be the “inner life” of two-dimensional space, a process involving “both choice and chance.” His intent is for the X-ray transparency to become an “infrastructural expression of the original photographic substance, as if a virtual spawn of the parent photograph.”

Spawn of Satan is more like it. But as I mentioned, the work balances disturbing and fascinating, as well as reality and technique.

“Berman’s work does have an eerie quality about it,” said Durga Garcia, curator for the Palm Beach Photographic Center. “I find it quite interesting, and I think our visitors will enjoy seeing it.” According to Jill Hartz, executive director of the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art at the University of Oregon, Berman is “an experimenter, a provocateur, a fine craftsman and a thoughtful artist. All of those qualities are evident in his work,” she said, “which, not surprisingly, shows his accomplishments in a variety of materials and subject matter.”

Hartz thinks disturbing is a good thing. “It makes us question our own assumptions,” she said. “Both about art and ourselves.”

SEDENTARY PLEASURES:

"Berman’s work is characterized by an unusual sensitivity to material and process combined with thoughtful and provocative subject matter that allows for (the) viewers’ personal explorations and reflections on larger social issues. Whether he chooses to manipulate photographic properties or transform wood, metal, plastic and glass into surprising forms, he pushes the boundaries of a material’s flexibility, achieving results that can range from elegant formal sculptures to playful and challenging three-dimensional forms. Humor and deep reflection coexist in ironic, playful, and deeply serious ways. The dynamic tensions and topical references call on viewers and sitters alike to question our ecological, ethical, and sexual beliefs and practices." Jill Hartz, Director, University of Virginia Art Museum, Charlottesville, Virginia

“The three dimensional works in the University of Virginia Museum exhibit are all functional stools, packed with visual puns about everyone’s favorite body orifices. For instance, the phallic “Object of Desire” is a hilarious take on “the crown jewels”. Semi-precious stones sparkle from the rounded top of an upright silver shaft, entwined with a metallic hose. Meanwhile, huge nuts stud the base, which Berman has crafted from a re-purposed hubcap. Berman enjoys mucking around with the material expression of ideas, and even his most streamlined productions reek of intellectual content. The ivory smooth “Tusk, Tusk” mimics the extracted fang of a huge beast. A curved red cavity beckons at one end while a white point pokes upward at the other. Berman takes this wink-wink dentate eroticism even further by offering multiple options for straddling the piece. “Sedentary Pleasures” is a thoroughly entertaining lumping together of form, function and fun.” Laura Parsons, The Hook, Charlottesville, VA

"In 'Sedentary Pleasures' Irwin Berman explored both the existential and literal implications of seating while straddling the divide between design and fine art and high and low art. The “pun” figured prominently in Berman’s work, particularly in “Mondrian” in which industrial materials (Edgelite Green Plexiglass) were combined with compressed rubber softballs to create a rocking chair, complete with its associated squeak. Curatorial Commentary, Annual Report, University of Virginia Art Museum, June 2009."

PAINTINGS FROM SX-70 PHOTO MANIPULATIONS:
“In a bizarre way, Irwin Berman shows the hidden personalities of the people he paints. His distorted, strained faces express the ambiguities in everything that exists. Things are not always what they seem to be. Berman at his best show a world that people would prefer to hide or ignore. Berman handles his subjects with a perception that hits the viewer with the impact of a punch. We are forced to see things at they truly are-at a second glance. Not the faces that people usually reveal, these are the fleeting glances, the momentary insights into true personalities, with all the double meanings and nuances. Berman explores and builds on the relationship between the way things are and the way things seem to be. His paintings are sometimes upsetting because they reflect parts of our own psychological makeup that we would rather hide, like the nasty remarks, the underhanded tricks, or the false smiles. They are as real as our most sincere compliments and actions, but we would rather not be reminded of them”. Andrea Mikotajuk, Arts Magazine.

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