Description of the work
Canadian artist Robert Berlin explores vestiges of motion; obscure, fleeting nuances of presence, of solitude, of silence. He explores the synergy of captured movement, blurred color and shadowed form. Neither mimetic, nor completely abstract, his work occupies a space where motion is being, time is seen, and the body often gives way to only a hint, a glimpse, a trace, of itself. There is a sense of silence and separateness of the subjects as they drift through the image. They are there, but not completely. We can only guess at their thoughts, their hopes, their simultaneous connection and isolation from their surroundings. Artist’s Statement In my work, the photograph is only the first step of my artistic exploration. In fact the initial photograph is really like a preliminary canvas, upon which I layer my artistic search. Having a background as a painter, I still think and feel like a painter, but I use a digital brush and canvas. Process is central to my image making. In a sense I try to distill the image, in order to find its essence. I remove extraneous colors, forms and shapes in a somewhat intuitive fashion. That intuition also plays a role in the picture as it’s taken, I never use a tripod, and I shoot on the fly, responding to the subjects and surroundings emotionally, not analytically. “Rudolf Arnheim once wrote: ‘whereas the painter invents, the photographer discovers...’ In my work I seek to do both. |