Spring Break 2018

Curator: Jana Brike’s acrylic-on-canvas painting, “Spring Break,” created in 2018, immediately throws us into an immersive and surreal scene. What are your first thoughts? Editor: My initial reaction is a sense of idyllic disconnect. There’s a captivating tranquility juxtaposed against what appears to be a recognizable urban backdrop, a dreamlike escape maybe? Curator: Exactly! I find the juxtaposition incredibly compelling, a young woman surrounded and seemingly almost consumed by the dense bed of pink petals, rendered against a cityscape background. Let’s delve a bit into this. The use of acrylics really brings out a certain vibrancy here, emphasizing this fantastical element of escaping into a manufactured natural scene. Editor: Considering our fraught relationship with fabricated imagery in art, especially those idyllic paintings promoted in salons to construct notions of femininity, what does this work achieve? Is Brike making a comment about our consumption of art? Is she promoting some form of artifice? Curator: The social element of viewership cannot be discarded in its study. "Spring Break," as Brike creates it, feels deeply entwined with themes of idealized youth, alienation, and perhaps the synthetic experiences we've come to normalize in our relationship to nature. It speaks to contemporary anxieties, maybe, about our disconnection with genuine experiences. Editor: The symbolism of the cherry blossoms is prominent here too. They represent a beauty that's both fleeting and potent. Given Brike’s integration of city architecture with nature, and as our collective interaction with it intensifies online, perhaps "Spring Break" is suggesting that virtual existence, albeit temporary, also has power. Curator: Absolutely, that's a pertinent point. And that could serve as an encouragement rather than just a critique. It feels as though Brike prompts a needed discussion. Does art only reflect life? Or, does the simulacrum that art provides transform societal norms and how we react to them? Editor: Yes. Ultimately, it invites the viewer to confront this intersection, doesn't it? It doesn't condemn, it questions and provides an aesthetic gateway for discourse. Curator: Precisely, and through that discourse, allows for growth and change, just like spring itself. Editor: A refreshing perspective indeed. "Spring Break" then, is much more than just an aesthetically pleasing work; it is a reflection of our era.