Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts
Montgomery, AL
334-244-5700
after HISTORY: The Paintings of David Bierk
The
Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts presents "after HISTORY: The Paintings
of David Bierk" 
on view from
November 11, 2000 through January 7, 2001. David Bierk, an artist who has
reconsidered traditions and ideas of the past to create an art for the new
millennium, focuses on three distinct subject areas in his paintings - landscapes,
still lifes, and what the artist calls "history paintings." Bierk
abstracts and adapts these subjects to create personal tributes to the works
of such renowned masters as Caravaggio, Vermeer, Ingres, Fantin-LaTour,
Manet, Bierstadt, and Hopper, among others. While basing his compositions
on art masterpieces from the past, he places these new images in a contemporary
context with a boldness and bravura that is vintage Bierk. (left:
Portrait in Stone, from Leonardo, 1999, oil on canvas, concrete,
From the collection of Kristan Newell, Toronto, Canada; right: Locked
in Migration, to Petrus Christus, 1998, oil on canvas, steel)
Well before the movement or term "appropriation"
was coined, Bierk was plumbing the riches of 
art history
for images that suited the direction of his work. As early as 1969, he revisited
a Leonardo da Vinci landscape as a background for his own self-portrait.
The artist's approach to historical images is not simply curatorial, but
conceptual. The work he creates "after" the masters is never a
straight copy, rather it is always contemporized and re-contextualized by
adjusting its traditional presentation. Thus, Bierk's paintings after the
masters are created purely in the spirit of praise, celebration, and as
an homage to the act of painting. (left: A Eulogy to LIfe, Locked
in Migration, to van Brussell, 1998, oil on canvas, rusted iron on board,
Collection of Becky and William Matthews, Atlanta, Georgia; right: A
Eulogy to LIfe, Locked in Migration, to Van Os, 1998, oil on canvas,
rusted iron on board)
Viewers will experience the fusion of past and present
in this exhibition of works from Bierk's early career to his 
most recent works. His compositions frequently
address the nostalgia of our times for the traditional painting styles of
previous centuries, while demonstrating how these classic styles have coalesced
and been transformed to create the pluralism indicative of the modern age.
(right: Locked in Migration to Manet, No. 1, 1997-98, oil
on board, steel)
By confronting the present with the styles
and techniques of the past, David Bierk creates an art that is both classic
and contemporary. Bierk's paintings are respectful celebrations of art history
and a recapitulation, for a new age, of ideals and values that are timeless.
In opening this dialogue with history both the artist and the viewer must
now reconsider the past as we move into the future. (left: A Eulogy
to Art & LIfe, Locked in Migration, to Rembrandt, 1999, oil on canvas,
steel, From the Collection of Mimi and Richard Fishchbein, New York, New
York)
This exhibition, organized and circulated
by the MMFA, is sponsored locally by Regions Bank and co-sponsored by the
Harmon-Cone Company. Following its showing at the MMFA, after HISTORY:
The Paintings of David Bierk will travel to the Hunter
Museum of American Art, Chattanooga, TN; Telfair
Museum of Art, Savannah, GA; Las Vegas
Art Museum, Las Vegas, NV; and Evansville Museum of Arts and Sciences,
Evansville, IN. (left: A Distant Light, Locked in Migration, To
Bierstadt, 1999, oil on canvas, steel)
Rev. 11/1/00
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