A puzzling, unusual light
Dessins Rouges

Pink Espace Gallery
1399 rue St. Jacques Montreal
November 1 to December 2, 2012.

Bertha Shenker’s monumental strips display an offhand skill of combining esthetic vision with spiritual exploration, of presenting the viewer glimpses of an inner landscape of introspection. What impresses me is the spontaneity in transmuting deep perceptions into rather terse, rather lapidary imagery. In spite of iconic forms whose symbolism at times verges on the schematic or sign-like, the artist frames an elegant and open-ended discourse that skirts mysticism and she does it in a light-handed way. She achieves the tour de force of creating work of existential depth – reminding us somewhat of the Montreal artist Betty Goodwin- that may effortlessly grace a large living room, since the strips she proposes are physically quite long.

These oblong works that unwind like scrolls, very likely allude to the archetype of the Torah, the original Hebrew version of the Old Testament, rolled up in cabinets inside synagogues. But there is not a simple one-to-one relationship between her strips and the Torah: the physical form of the works may in my reading allude to the Torah – it is one possible interpretation. The iconography is both stark and open-ended. Figures and shapes are clearly delineated and majestically static. As in other works of the artist, a form of sacredness seems to be alluded to. The configuration of the work is conducive to such a feeling. Under divine guidance -or caprice as it were- to this artist, the human condition is timeless.

In Squat the Light, a human figure cowers in a corner: this man is reduced to the diffidence of a prisoner or a concentration camp inmate, a zek. (a prisoner in Stalin’s Gulag) The meager body has ribs which show through the skin. On him are focused powerful horizontal rays of light. What are we to make of this? The modest schematic man might evoke the Biblical figure of Adam after the fall- or that of Job. Job, who maintains faith even as God allows Satan to take his wealth, his children and physical health. He pleads for an explanation but stops short of accusing the Almighty of injustice. Eventually God ceases the torment and grants Job even more happiness than he possessed at the outset. Bertha Shenker seems to address the problem of the inscrutable nature of human suffering under the aegis of a purportedly beneficent divinity. Strange rays of hope, she seems to imply, radiate amidst existential darkness.

In Parade, a procession of dogs – or are these figures wolves? – traverse the horizontal strip under the pressure of an overwhelming heaviness, and yet they press forward. Bundles of white and orange radiation (or is it rain?) come down conically from a black and grey stormy sky. If one were to attempt theological interpretations, numerous lines of approach become possible. A Manicheistic vision of divinity harboring a spot of softness in his heart? Lambs going to the slaughter…but these animal icons are not lambs: they appear to be carnivores, etc. The imagery is mysterious and seems to well up from subconscious depth. We are dealing with a form of personal spirituality that is questioning itself and invites others to frame their own questioning. The general tenor of the imagery swings between anxiety and a very strange vision of what may be divine light.

Body and blood appears to spoof pages of anatomy and botany textbook drawings. On the engaging pinkish background of pictorial space, something resembling the circulation of blood in the human body, and that of sap in plants, are sketchily and almost naively outlined. A symbolic sun disc with its rays partakes the field of vision with a pared down image of the nervous system, topped by the human brain.

Behind cartoon-like visual outlines, there is an intimation of both a very quirky form of pantheism and more than a hint of physical suffering. The point of the picture is its iconographic ambiguity and the range of anthropological and natural matters it points to.

Red Forest offers a sense of esthetic balance between the rhythmic arrays of gaunt trees with their dense branch displays, a sprinkling of minute human figures among the trees, set out on a pink background. Colour harmony is notable. The ends of the strip are rolled onto cylinders now clearly suggesting a Torah scroll.

Bertha Shenker is constructing a personal iconography which forms an open-ended narrative. The open work, l’oeuvre ouverte, outlined by Umberto Eco, a concept going back to the theories of Wilhelm Dilthey on the numerous approaches available to a work of art, comes to mind as we try to get a sense of the aims of Bertha Shenker.

The late twentieth century New Image movement, variants of neo-expressionism – representations of objects or environments in simplified styles – offer some perspective on the iconographic strategy of the artist. A blend of styles, albeit tightly integrated, allows the artist great freedom in negotiating narrative and emotional registers. The legacy of the cartoon – a possible kinship with the work of Keith Haring – may be singled out as an essential expressive device in the works.

The unity of imagery allows the artist to explore possibilities of mysticism, while a light touch and the ability to pick appropriate stylistic means allow her to stay decisively within the realm of contemporary art.