Untitled 1976

Curator: Standing before us is a striking piece, an untitled mixed-media work from 1976 by Rene Bertholo, blending screenprint and ink techniques. It immediately strikes one as somewhat unsettling, wouldn't you say? Editor: Unsettling is precise. The limited palette of blues and stark reds certainly evokes a coolness, perhaps a mechanical or technological unease. And those vaguely discernible shapes…are they vehicles, perhaps? Curator: Indeed, Bertholo was fascinated by the intersection of man and machine. If you observe the composition, there’s a fractured quality to the image. Note how the shapes and lines create this dynamic sense of implied movement. How does this semiotic fragmentation add to our reading of the work? Editor: The overlapping planes recall early Futurist paintings, which idealized speed and technology. The word "Amor" is there amidst what look like grills and headlights. I wonder if it hints at a dangerous love affair with the automobile. Consider too that ‘S. Morte’ is painted onto part of what could be a shoe or even a gravestone: Saint Death. What a juxtaposition with ‘amor’! Curator: The choice of medium, screenprint combined with ink, offers an interesting dichotomy too. Screen printing allows for the mechanical reproduction, but the addition of ink allows for the expression of the hand and therefore the artist’s emotion and intervention. Editor: Exactly, It presents us with an interesting tension, echoing the themes we are perceiving in the broader image—a tension between life and death, between love and speed and risk. What is fascinating is that it lacks resolution, almost daring us to try and bring a sense of order and logic to it. Curator: The dynamism inherent in its composition prevents such a logical certainty and keeps it fresh for years to come. Editor: Precisely, as it pulls us, somewhat uncomfortably, between potentially disastrous dualities.