Sherbet Green has announced the representation of Marieke Bernard-Berkel (b. 1988, Laon, France), following her second solo exhibition with the gallery earlier this year.
Bernard-Berkel’s recent works consist of an investigation into landscape painting. Building on multiple canonical references, including expressionism, post-impressionism and psychedelic art, she utilises wild, overabundant colourways and impasto to convey a contemporary lens on the medium. The paintings begin with small drawings or photographs from books of predominantly European countryside views, which the artist then paints over extended periods of time, layering and distorting them until they give way to new realisations. Equally underscored by her background in set design, the works exhibit a certain theatricality in their built-out, maquette-like forms, and anti-naturalistic palette. The acidity with which she portrays these landscapes captures the sentiment of human subjectivity within a rapid, consuming, modern-day society.
About the artist
Marieke Bernard-Berkel is a French-German artist living and working in Paris. She received her MA Fine Art from Beaux-Arts de Paris in 2013. Solo exhibitions include All the world’s a stage (2024) and Preludes (2024), both at Sherbet Green, London. Group exhibitions include PRÉSENTATIONS, Radicants, Paris (2022), Cloud Point, curated by Nicolas Bourriaud, Paradise Row, London (2022) and Nils Alix-Tabeling: Maison Catabase, PUBLIC Gallery, London (2022).
