Hornlet 2013

Eduardo Berliner made this watercolor, Hornlet, sometime around now. The image is ghostly, unfinished. It's all about process: a portrait emerges from the darkness, but it's like he’s trying to conjure something up, not just represent it. The hands sprouting from the head are rendered in washes of watery pink, the skin translucent, and the dark pooling watercolor defines the background. This kind of see-through color gives the whole thing a fragile, ethereal feel. Look at the dark black marks that loosely define the background, and then the very deliberate placing of the red marks at the base of the horns: these create an emotional tension within the work. There's a real push and pull, a kind of raw energy. This reminds me of other artists who are invested in a dream logic, like Paula Rego. But while her work is intensely narrative, this piece is more elusive and strange, it embraces the space between things.