Spring: Beauty and Melancholy in the Art of Shane Berkery

08/07/2018 Severine Grosjean

Shane Berkery is an emerging Irish artist whose paintings mainly refer to the human figure.

Each painting offers a relationship between the different languages of the painting (representation, abstraction, color, composition and degree of completion).

He currently finds inspiration in his Japanese grandfather’s photos, including nudes and old photos. He seeks to create figures that evoke a sense of “reality” so that the viewer can feel their presence in front of them. Shane traces the effects of Japanese culture where memory is the protagonist. The painting offer an exotic perception of the banal with the pale colors. The color pink is very present in his paintings. The paintings emphasize the ephemeral nature of beauty but also of life. Shane’s paintings are like poems talking about the dead of the cherry trees. In his works subtle atmospheric and luminous changes are operated, with a complete absence of shadows and a great capacity for synthesis to capture the themes.

Shane Berkery challenges the painting by exploring the tension between two worlds created by them: past and presence, absence and presence, difference and similarity.

There is a feeling like floating in a cloud, of letting yourself be carried away by pleasure. These bodies come from another reality, almost phantasmagorical. The artistic goal of this 26-year-old young painter is to create a strange, nostalgic middle space between Oriental and Western memories.

In a transport, on a bench or just eating, he tries to capture and relate situations of daily life. Thanks to large-scale works, the viewer can experience the feeling of sharing the room with another presence. He feels that he can relate to something familiar but at the same time, not familiar.

In Shane’s work, everyone can observe the different study applied to men and women. While men are painted in suits and in action, women have an erotic character. These last ones have a fine body but with curbs. Without vulgarity they wait, looking at the spectator. They illustrate a sexual fantasy, which could echo the Japanese culture of “shunga”, a Japanese visual production genre whose main theme is the representation of sex. They are the courtesans expressing the hidden passions of everyday life.

In definite, the works of Shane shout “Spring” because life is beautiful but short.

Partnership: The nomad Creative Project