Dark 2013

Editor: So, this is "Dark" by Eduardo Berliner, painted in 2013 using oil on canvas. It strikes me as rather unsettling... there's a palpable tension in the air, and I can't quite put my finger on why. How do you interpret this work? Curator: The unsettling feeling comes, I believe, from the jarring combination of familiar imagery with unsettling symbolism. Consider the figures. What are their faces telling you? What feelings or ideas might they represent? Editor: Well, their eyes… they’re blank, almost absent. It makes me think of a loss of innocence, or maybe a detachment from reality? The masked figure seems like a menacing authority figure. Curator: Precisely. Berliner uses masks, blurred features, and pale skin tones. This generates psychological disturbance and unease by defamiliarizing elements we typically associate with comfort and recognition. Masks can conceal identity, or become it; consider what other animals are presented to us in this scene. Do you see similar things happening in this work, or ways it seems to subvert conventions? Editor: The dogs seem like corrupted versions of loyalty, perhaps? They’re being impaled, being leaned on and in one case appear to be eating human flesh, which is extremely disturbing.. This juxtaposition of youth and these surreal acts feels loaded with a disturbing undercurrent, a kind of... forced maturity or corrupted innocence. Curator: Exactly. He disrupts the perceived harmony, showing not a simple world, but one fraught with tension and, as you noticed, corruption. He brings an innocence together with darker truths, things perhaps best left untouched, yet are forced upon one none-the-less. Think on the works of Neo-Expressionism here... It shows how symbols themselves carry complicated histories that seep into the present. Editor: This conversation’s given me so much to consider—the way the symbols play off of and against each other is both disorienting and incredibly effective. Curator: Yes, the defamiliarization pushes us to confront our own assumptions about how the world ought to be. We see how symbols, when re-contextualized, invite new and challenging understandings.