A Nashville native, Will Berry
in his first show at Zeitgeist in eleven years presents a body of
paintings dealing with the dynamics of light. Veiling cultural themes, his
forays in abstraction with diverse motifs embark on research that uses metals
–aluminum, graphite, white lead, and gold-, and are the fruition of his
investigation and experiences as an expatriate living in Mexico.
Dedicated to painting, Berry stubbornly
pursues his quest. Experimentation and the quest for a personal language
grounded in tradition and challenging established precepts are the impulses
driving his practice. Process and exercise produce a factura or formalization
devoid of short cuts that uphold aesthetic rigor, an infatuation with quality
and with a succinct visual discourse.
Belonging to a slew of artists
understanding painting in new ways and pushing its confines to affirm the
practice as a form of knowledge, Berry in his painting examines closely
the corpus of Cy Twombly and Robert Ryman, certainly Rudolf Stingel , and has
affinities of sorts with the creativity of such contemporaries as Kelley Walker
and Rashid Johnson among other exponents of this new wave.
Withdrawn in his Universe yet aware
of cultural and societal issues, Berry is selfreferential, and the work
is organized in succinct series without dwelling in tautology. Inscribed in
modernist classicism providing him with an exit visa to trespass –sublimely-
borders that inhibit the inquiry for new pictorial languages, Berry
paints for himself, articulating experiences that once resolved formally in
painting, offer both a visual delight as well as a myriad of understated or
obtuse webs of signification that go beyond his person.
Like the main character in the now classic
Tennessee Williams play and later film by John Houston, Berry
transgresses established boundaries. Formal limits, cultural frameworks, social
taboos, established versions and visions of personal as well as epic histories
are challenged, undermined.
Aesthetically, the defiance is the
unbiased pursuit that brings together form and content, namely, the impurity of
metals as a support to experiment with light but also to articulate the mixture
of cultures -at times contradictory- by means of questioning his own identity.
His studio practice is a laboratory to reflect on broader and more poignant
issues regarding multi-cultural histories that flaunt homogeneity and univocal
narratives on History.
Berry is akin to the outcast preacher of William's play who is
left with little choice but to work as a tour guide for religious groups
visiting Mexico; each for dissimilar reasons is defined by his engagement in a
process of re-invention in a foreign yet familiar culture. Both are also
emblematic of the the foreigner who feels more at home in his adopted land than
in his country of birth.
To be an ex-pat may be the attempt
to hide or escape one’s past, or at the other pole, to garner the critical
distance needed for self-examination, the opportunity to abstract one 's self
from the weight of one’s past in order to act in the present.
Like the exile or the outcast, the
ex-pat maneuvers in and around multiple cultures and languages; and in Berry’s
case, these include aesthetic forms that function as a cultural index. In
Mexico, he has sought and still seeks selfknowledge and a critical discourse on
culture.
The phrase that confers the title to
the play and the film refers to an iguana tended by the cabana boys at the
resort, its neck tied by a rope, At the end of the rope lies the precipice that
defines and defies the process of self-exile and reinvention for both the
former preacher and Berry. The end of the rope is the limit as well as
origin from which new and uncharted territories can be entertained with the
corresponding awareness and courage required. Analogous to the iguana, Berry
places himself at the end of the rope to paint, and paint his experience and
history; to paint in order to indulge in the dynamics of light and to paint to
enlighten the night of history, glimpsing it thickness, it's deep zones and
taboos. The light is the grammar of the series, the motifs drawn from Persian
and Turkish carpet designs, Pre-Colombian signs, Old and New World Baroque
patterns are the lexicon, yet both are the pretext and vehicle for painting as
a form of thinking, all the while being visually seductive if not stunning.
Victor
Zamudio-Taylor / Mexico City / 11 IX 13
VICTOR
ZAMUDIO-TAYLOR is an independent writer, lecturer, and curator based in Mexico City. He writes for academic as well as lifestyle publications, has served as a curator/adviser for the Bass Museum, Miami Beach, the Jumex Foundation/ Collection, Mexico City, and is on the editorial board of
ARTNEXUS.