All existence born of space, Mrs Chung Ching Hsin, Da Xiang Art Space gallery Director

There is a constant order to heavenly bodies, and all bodies in the Universe abide by specific motions. Interpretations of the power and movements of these forms comprise a painting vocabulary that artists strive to convey. For each individual work or part of a series in the current exhibition, the state of deconstruction and reconstruction shapes various forces within the More right immediate space: internal, external, being, non-being, and in varying weights. All of the tangible and intangible elements in the arena quietly undergo subtle transformation. Each fleeting moment in the artist’s oil painting becomes an eternity in these landscapes of stillness within motion, and motion within stillness.

As the body encounters the canvas in artist Beverly Barkat’s creative process, nature’s rhythms seem to respond to past life experiences. Each lingering, turning, or accumulating line and brushstroke evokes indelible time and a sense of movement that is conjured by traces, pulses, and speed. The readability of illusionary and realistic forms on the canvas are thus amplified. By generating spatial transformation, the conflict and compromise between color blocks, fragments, and surfaces construct a visual scene of unformed forms that have been partially abstracted from earlier figurative paintings. The harmonious existence between objects represents the artist’s hopeful metaphor in the personal psyche and for societal conditions. The power and consensus of a collective is often the best method for achieving progress; hence, all existence is born of space.

In addition to oil colors, the mixed media works on paper also express a qualitative dynamism of flow. Influenced by Japanese calligraphy, the momentum of grand movements enables ink to flow freely within blank spaces. Forceful progressions dissipate like watermarks in midair, while a trace of fractured emptiness is unveiled within unparalleled freedom thus tacitly establishing a nonexistent existence. Whether in her selection of media for installation works, or in her explorations on the topic of the tribes of Israel, there is a posture in Beverly Barkat’s work that re-interrogates the self by internalizing nourishments from the past. These various accumulations enable her to adeptly define a personal artistic context. The unexpected use of colors is always a much-anticipated expressive element in her work. Soft light permeates the accumulation of pigments, unfurling slowly with the gentle calmness of a mesmerizing poem.

Each encompassing all; and all is contained within one. The essence of connection between nature and matter cannot be easily discerned, but Beverly Barkat interprets a certain incomplete and ongoing condition within the microcosm. Perhaps creativity is epitomized by locating the self within, in order to perceive each present moment.

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空中生萬有,

天體的秩序是守恆的,宇宙中所有的個體也遵循著某種運行,其中如何詮釋形體能量與運動是藝術家欲傳達的繪畫語言,在這次展出的作品中,無論是單一作品或是組件作品,每一次的解構與重組的狀態,都讓當下的空間形成不同的力量,內、外、有、無和輕重,場域中所有的元素,有形甚或無形都正微妙的悄悄改變,動中至靜,靜中有動的風景,也就如藝術家的油彩,每個瞬間將成就永恆。 More right

Beverly Barkat的創作過程中,其身體在面對畫布時,那自然的律動都像是回應過往生活留下的經驗,每一次筆觸線條的停留、轉折或堆疊,都帶出不可抹滅的時間與痕跡,躍動、速度而產生的運動感,讓畫面的虛、實形體增加了更多的閱讀性,於空間異變的生成下,色塊中,片與面之間的衝突與包容,構成了非形之形的視覺畫面,也部分抽離了早期的具象繪畫。物與物之間的和諧共存是藝術家所隱喻的自我心理與社會狀態的期許,群體的力量與共識,往往是達成前進的最好方法,誠然,空中生萬有。

除油彩外,複合媒材於紙本上的作品亦表現流變的質量動態,曾經受日本書法的影響,大動作的勢態,讓墨流暢於空白之間,力道的行走似水痕幻化於空中,無比的自由卻又流露出一絲的虛空粉碎,不存在的存在隱然成立。Beverly Barkat的作品有一種姿態,是將過往的養分內化後再次提問自己,無論是裝置藝術材料的選擇或是以色列支派問題的議題探討,種種的積累讓她更熟稔的整理出屬於自己的藝術脈絡,尤其在她的作品中,色彩的不可預測始終是令人期待的重要表現,每每的顏料堆疊後,卻滲透出透明柔光,冉冉舒展,如迷人的詩,輕安而靜定。

一即一切,一切即一。本質上,自然與物質之間的關聯性,很難清晰的述說其樣貌,透過Beverly Barkat的微觀,詮釋了一種未完成且持續進行的狀態,置身其中感受每個生活當下,也許就是最好的創作。

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Beverly Barkat’s Painterly Gesture, Raffaella Frascarelli, Curator and Nomas Foundation Director

The ethics of freedom transformed into a political gesture, Beverly Barkat’s work maps out human relationships: personal identity and social differentiation, individual and collectively, universal time and contingent history, cosmic and earthly. Pictorial abstraction and language; questioning relations with others and the world around us, the purpose. As the artist observes, “Using the understanding of what happens previously” is the More right way to understand the present, but above all to imagine the future. In Mass Movement Energy accounts of what unites living species, human beings, worlds, dimensions, or different attitudes are only possible within the dynamics of a chorus in which individual voices come together to compose a melody. The crisis of the pandemic that has generated staginess, isolation, and separation becomes an opportunity to rethink reasons, emotions, practices, and feelings that unite a society that is increasingly post-human and eager to understand.

Listening to the body, the need to move simultaneously within the painting and within the world, each time picking up and making use of the traces of the previous work, like a thread that continues to weave a new sign each time within an unbounded canvas. As in Jean-Paul Sartre’s phenomenological ontology, the human being can only choose to be free, but this freedom only exists in plurality, an action based on existence. But without a deep, radical, empathic observation of what we think, do, and implement, it is not possible to find answers to the sense itself of life. Beverly Barkat’s abstract painterly gesture is not an individual intentionality but implies an intentional sociality that alludes to and arises from other subjects. Whether one or more canvases make up a work, the movement of matter and energy always occurs communally, holding together multiple registers, multiple spaces, and multiple dimensions at the same time.
This position of constant inclusion and understanding gives material form to the meaning of the care we use to resolve the issues we encounter every day on our journey. In this way, knowledge of oneself, of others, of the world is never peremptory, closed, finite: on the contrary, it exists as a tool to explore what we do not understand or does not belong to us, that which each person’s memory preserves and re-elaborates, that which consciousness generates to support choice.

Beyond post-modernity, Beverly Barkat’s painterly expression abstracts in an aesthetic key such knowledge: the pubic space is the work; reality is the collective outlook; social identity is the artist’s graphic inscription. Before a hyper stimulated global community awash in hyperproduced images, the artist’s aphaeresis is her personal formula of resistance and a philosophical choice, a symbolic dimension that engenders objectivization and signification. Her abstract painting explores the relationship between aesthetics and politics, the image of social cohesion cultivated in the past and extending into the future.

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貝弗利.巴卡特的繪畫姿態,

自由倫理學已經轉變成一種政治表態,貝弗利.巴卡特的作品鋪展出多樣的人際關係:個人身分和社會差異,個體與集體,世界時間與偶發歷史,宇宙與天地。圖像式的抽象和語彙;探問著與他者、與周遭一切的關係,目的。根據藝術家的觀察,「利用對過去種種的體悟」本是理解當下的方法,但那更是通往未來想像的門徑。在「空中之有」(Mass Movement Energy)一展中,只有當各自表述凝匯成一曲旋律,那齊力發聲的動能,便可讓生物、人類、世界、次元、或不同的態度得以相融相聚。帶來封閉、隔離與不真實感的全球疫情危機轉化成一個契機,藉此重新思考讓逐漸朝向後人類而且渴望理解的社會能夠團結起來的理由、情緒、作法、感覺。 More right

傾聽身體的聲音,傾聽在畫作裡、在世界裡同時移動的需要,一次又一次拾起前一件作品留下的線索並加以利用,像個線頭,用它在沒有邊際的畫布中,一回又一回地接著織出新的符號。就像在尚-保羅.沙特(Jean-Paul Sartre)的現象學本體論,人類只能選擇自由,但這種自由只會出現在多元性中,一種以存在為基礎的行為。然而,若是對我們所想的、所做的、所實踐的,沒有深刻徹底乃至共感的觀照,便無法找到生命意義的答案。貝弗利.巴卡特的抽象繪畫姿態,並非一種個體的意向性,而是隱含著某種暗指或衍生自其他主體的,具指向意義的社會性。無論作品是由一或兩幅畫布組成,物質和能量的運動總是共同發生,將多重的層次、空間、次元同時聚合。

這種不斷包容和理解的立場,為我們在解決每日經歷的問題上所付諸的心力,賦予實質的形體。這樣一來,關於自身、他者、世界的知識,就永遠不會是絕對的、封閉的、有限的:相反地,這知識會以工具的方式存在,讓我們可以去探索未知,或不屬於我們的種種──那是每個人的記憶都會保存下來並細細回味,是意識會產生出來作為選擇的後援。

貝弗利.巴卡特的繪畫般表現超越後現代性,用一種美學手段提煉出如此的知識:公共空間即是作品;現實是集體視界;社會認同是藝術家圖文兼具的款識。面對被過量生產影像淹沒了的過度刺激的全球大環境,藝術家的抽象表現,是她予以抵抗的個人配方,是哲學性的選擇,一個產生客觀化和意義的象徵性次元。她的抽象繪畫探討美學和政治的關係,是過去養成並持續延伸到未來的社會凝聚意象。

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