Sara Berman: No Visible Means Of Support

28 October - 2 December

Sara Berman
No Visible Means Of Support
Sara Berman

Sara Berman (b. 1975, UK) lives and works in London. She studied fashion BA at Central Saint Martins in the 1990’s and worked in fashion before studying for her MFA at Slade UCL graduating in 2016.

Working with the trope of the Harlequin as Trickster Whore, Berman examiners the societal constructs of the female experience. She radicalises the historically female domain of portraiture. In painting herself, Berman refutes the male gaze and objectification of women. The figures are often defiant and Berman’s gentle muted aesthetic is fraught with contrapuntal layers, the canvas appears almost bruised; the visceral and corporeal juxtaposed with a delicacy and fluidity of line and movement. Berman’s work uses its very appeal to defy expectation: a violent transgression within beauty.
- Solo Exhibitions include (Upcoming) Vielmetter gallery, Los Angeles (2024); (Upcoming) Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery, Berlin (2024); (Upcoming) No Visible Means of Support, Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery, Palm Beach, Florida, USA (2023); The Armory Show NYC, Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery, New York (2022); Taking Space, Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery, London (2021); Double Ententre, Anat Ebgi, LA (2018); Between Community and commerce, Site specific installation ZAZ10TS Time Square, NYC (2018); Matter Out Of Place, 93 Baker St. London, Frieze (2018) and Big Cactus Little Cactus, Galerie Huit, Hong Kong (2017).
  
  Group Exhibitions include Perpetual Portrait, Vielmetter, Los Angeles (2023); BEACH, Nino Mier Gallery, New York (2023); Where the Wild Roses Grow, Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery, Schloss Görne, Germany (2023); Royal Academy of Fine Art Summer Exhibition 2023, London, UK (2023); Miart Art Fair, with Gallery Mimmo Scognamiglio, Milan, Italy (2023); Eye of the Collector Art Fair, with Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery, London, UK (2023); Perpetual Portrait, Vielmetter Los Angeles, USA (2023); Untitled Miami, Art Fair, Miami, USA (2022); Home is where the Art is, De Kunsthal, Rotterdam (2022); Armoured, Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery, London (2022); Like there is hope and I can dream of another world, Hospital Rooms in collaboration with Hauser & Wirth, Hauser & Wirth, London, UK (2022); Untitled Art Fair, Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery booth, Miami, US (2021); Summer Exhibition 2021, Royal Academy of Arts, London (2021); Art + Psychiatric Intensive Care, Hospital Rooms, London (2021); Enter Art Fair, with Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery, Copenhagen, Denmark (2021); Facing the Sun, Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery, Schloss Görne, Germany (2021); Supastore, NIDA Art Colony, Lithuania (2020); Scene Unscene, Gallery 46, London (two person show) (2020); We Could Apply Our Lipstick, C&C Gallery, London (2020); Isolated Observations, Candida Stevens Gallery, Sussex (2020); Cure3 exhibition, Bonhams, London (2020); Exeter Contemporary Open, Exeter Phoenix, Exeter (2019); Hauser and Wirth Hospital Rooms Fundraising Auction, London (2019); Think In Pictures with Amelchenko Curated by John Newsom Orchard Street, New York (2019); Solitaire, Sapar Contemporary NYC (two person show) (2018); Dark Wood, Transition Gallery, London (2017); Summer Exhibition, Royal Academy of Arts, London (2017); Young Gods, Charlie Smith Gallery (2017) and Topophobophilia, Gallery 46, London (2016).
- Highlights and collections
  Sara Berman was featured in the 2015 BP Portrait Award that showcased fifty-five of the most outstanding and innovative portraits around the world. Berman’s work can be found in the collection of The House of KOKO, London; The Poort Visser collection, Netherlands; The Maison Estelle, London, UK; The RO2 Art Collection and the Montparnasse collection, Canada. Sara continues to be involved in the Hospital Room projects here in London and was part of the exhibition at Hauser & Wirth, London with Hospital Rooms.
No Visible Means Of Support

Gargantuan women – or is it one woman, multiple versions of a self? – appear dancing, cross-legged or reclining against soft coloured, bruising surfaces. Their huge bodies dominate the space, in poses that are both challenging and awkward, joyous and searching. The British artist and former fashion designer Sara Berman refers to this character as an avatar or surrogate. She bears a physical resemblance to Berman and inevitably captures the artist’s moods and movements across the canvas, but at the same time, she is a figure to be moulded and dressed. No Visible Means of Support, Berman’s second solo exhibition with Kristin Hjellegjerde gallery and the inaugural show at the gallery’s West Palm Beach location, presents a powerful new body of work that emerged from a period of personal struggle and transformation. These resulting paintings are some of Berman’s largest to date as well as her most vulnerable and exuberant.
- Each painting begins with the diamond pattern motif of the harlequin. When portrayed as male, the harlequin is a lovable joker, but the same character as a woman becomes, in Berman’s words, ‘a trickster whore’. For the artist, this character encapsulates a familiar double standard but also speaks to the social and cultural roles that women are expected to perform. As such, the diamond pattern applied a base layer on to the canvas becomes the dark underbelly of each portrait, which Berman then works over with layers of paint. This is not, however, a process of obliteration but rather a wrestling with self – as Berman wipes and scrapes at the surface, the harlequin rises up once more, revealing itself as a kind of mottled, shimmering skin. However, while previous works offered only the slightest glimpse of the motif, these new paintings are more brazen. The diamond pattern is a falling shadow in the background as well as a prominent feature, in Cowgirls, Afterglow and What Part of NO Don’t You Understand, of the character’s clothing. It’s a form of exposure but one that is defiant and proud.
  
  Significantly, it is not just the motif that has been exposed but also the character’s body. Berman previously flattened the garments that she painted, removing the folds and seams of the fabric to create rigid shapes that simultaneously contained and abstracted the body. In these works, clothing and accessories are still a form of armour – most obviously in Old Man’s Balls where the character holds a spiky bunch of Gomphocarpus physocarpus as a kind of weapon or shield in front of her chest – but they are also a costumes, a tool for play and experimentation. In Cowgirls and Tank Girl, she wears a pair of boy’s leopard print shorts and white cowboy boots; in Dirty Wanker the figure appears in a wide-legged stance clutching the skirt of a pink dress with ruffled shoulders; and in Afterglow, she lies back, head tilted, legs akimbo while her skirt dissolves around her into a fluorescent froth of glittering pixels.
- But for all their apparent softness, these paintings are the process of a hard-won battle. We see it in the figure’s variously challenging expressions, her confronting scale and the visible bruising leftover from Berman’s violent painting process, but the struggle is most clearly captured in the video work Trickster Whore. Here, Berman steps into her paintings: she becomes the harlequin and what we witness is both the pain and pleasure of that transformation. ‘It really speaks to what’s going on behind the paintings,’ says Berman.
  
  No Visible Means of Support may sound like a lamentation, but it is really a statement of self-empowerment and affirmation. As Berman puts it: ‘This work is about me coming out fighting for my position in the world.’
Enquire
- Sara Berman, Tank Girl, 2022
- Sara Berman, Three Sides to Every Story, 2023

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Sara Berman: No Visible Means Of Support

Sara Berman

Sara Berman

No Visible Means Of Support

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