On a recent visit to Tony Berlant’s studio, two very

poignant remarks stand out from our conversation

that took place wandering through his studio sur-

rounded by the body of work that is being exhibited

at Nyehaus, Extended Ecstasy, and a series of very

early works called The Girls that will be shown si-

multaneously at his gallery, LA Louver, in Los Ange-

les. First, when I mentioned the word jigsaw puzzle,

there was a charming moment of embarrassment

as he confessed he had never thought about nor did

he have the temperament for jigsaw puzzles at any

point in his career; and then the ludicrousness of the

remark sank in. He certainly had the temperament,

his work is painstakingly labor intensive. But as we

talked more, however, I understood his aversion to

the use of the word puzzle; he is so specific about

the “erasing” and enhancing specific details of the

image with shape. Puzzle makers cuts have no re-

lationship to the image. Once I digested his intent, I

no longer could see these “marks” as puzzle pieces.

The second poignant moment happened when I

asked him to compress his career into a symmet-

ric history and discuss the transitions / connection

between bodies of work that he began in 1960.

The consternation on his face revealed that I had

put him on the spot. To me, the viewer, that had the

privilege of objectivity, the path from the Girls, es-

tablishing his language of bold, pop imagery and its

paradoxical ability to embrace minimalism, to aquar-

ium dioramas filled with mysterious surreal scenes

of found objects hinting at a narrative, the houses

some of which barred the viewer from entry, other

inviting them in to humorous scenes of women in

cages or a lone shell, the monolithic object’s exterior

covered in advertising images fractured into biomor-

phic forms and adhered to the surface by the nails

present themselves in his recent body of work and

reads like a carefully choreographed path of styles

and logic. And Berlant, when he gets over the initial

anxiety of taking 50 years of work and compress-

ing it into 20 minutes of art historical references and

subtle stylistic descriptions, speaks as fluidly and

intuitively as does his work.

Berlant now works on gesso treated plywood. He

mostly uses photographs that he has taken, blowing

them up and inkjet printing them on to the prepared

plywood. Berlant then with surgeon-like precision

takes pieces of tin painted by the artist and tin that

has been printed with advertising imagery; with a

signature means of attaching the pieces with nails,

the small head of the nails left visible as they trace

the edge of the pieces. He does this much in the

way Lichtenstein’s Ben-Day dots became his sig-

nature artifact. In this body of work, Berlant has

become obsessed with an image of a goddess,

extracted from Rorkshachinterpretation of an im-

age gleaned from spending day after day staring at

the plywood floor of his studio. Berlant presents the

clarity of this image as if he is showing me the narra-

tive clarity of Botticelli’s Venus. Berlant is not crazy,

quite the contrary; supremely lucid. He just has “art-

ist eyes,” a singular way of viewing the world. These

same eyes tell him to cover certain parts of the inkjet

printed surface with these pieces of tin, as if he has

shaman like knowledge of the erogenous zones of

the picture. He has turned subjectivity in to objectiv-

ity. His only hesitation, he explains, is his reticence

to draw the covers over his goddess, obscuring her

seductive powers. This ambivalent space that Ber-

lant has between an almost romantic attachment

to subject / image and his rigorous formal side, (he

for instance, goes to elaborate lengths to wrap the

inkjet image around the edge of the canvas, hav-

ing to hand paint the photographic continuation to

make the subtle point that these works are “objects”

as well as paintings) is where the real mystery and

power of the works come from. I will leave an inter-

pretation of the artist’s weaving the covers for the

goddess from her own image alone.

This romantic attachment to subject, is more clear-

ly, at least for the viewer, expressed in the second

series of work that draws from photographic im-

ages Berlant took sitting at night in the tree-choked

ravine of Chris Burden and Nancy Rubins’ property.

Berlant took 45-minute exposures of the moon and

starlight poking through the loosely knit blanket of

trees. Berlant was left alone in the twilight, reflecting

on whether the neighborhood mountain lion might

come down for a visit. The resulting images loaded

with the detail of a 45-minute exposure, prompts

the nervous eye to look for movements or recogni-

tion of life in the shadows. Even the viewer’s au-

dial sense feels on alert for the sound of a broken

branch. Berlant, again, struggles with the restraint

to obscure and enhance the seduction of the im-

age with overlaying images, but it is this tension that

keeps the picture’s surface undulating, breathing

like a mountain lion.

Aztec 2011Found and fabricated printed thin collagedon laser ink jet printed plywood panel with

steel brads. 32 x 24 in.

Long Shot 2010Found and fabricated printed tin collagedon laser ink jet printed plywood panel with

steel brads. 42 x 37 in.

Beside Myself 2011Found and fabricated printed tin collagedon plywood with steel brads. 24 x 32 in.

Break Out 2011Found and fabricated printed tin collagedon laser ink jet printed plywood panel with

steel brads. 28 x 43.5 in.

Rag Tag 2011Found and fabricated printed tin collaged on laser ink jet printed plywood panel with steel

brads. 22 x 22 in.

Is What It Is 2011Found and fabricated printed tin collaged on laser ink jet printed plywood panel with

steel brads. 24 x 50.5 in.

Tilt in Time 2011Found and fabricated printed tin collaged on laser ink jet printed plywood panel with steel

brads. 25 x 25 in.

Fast Forward 2011Found and fabricated printed tin collaged on

plywood with steel brads. 75.5 x 32 in.

Tigertail 2011Found and fabricated printed tin collaged on laser ink jet printed plywood panel with steel

brads. 113 x 48 in.

Touchstone 2011Found and fabricated printed tin collagedon laser ink jet printed plywood panel with

steel brads. 84 x 36 in.

Goddess 2011Found and fabricated printed tin collagedon plywood with steel brads. 95 x 40.5 in.

Happenstance 2010Found and fabricated printed tin collagedon laser ink jet printed plywood panel with

steel brads. 66 x 29 in.

Ruled From Above 2009Found and fabricated printed tin collaged on laser ink jet printed plywood panel with steel

brads. 60 x 28 in.

Jump In 2011Found and fabricated printed tin collaged on laser ink jet printed plywood panel with steel

brads. 84 x 35 in.

Flame 2011Found and fabricated printed tin collaged on laser ink jet printed plywood panel with steel

brads. 84 x 35 in.

Bird Song 2011Found and fabricated printed tin collaged on laser ink jet printed plywood panel with steel

brads. 84 x 36 in.

NYEHAUS.COM | P: 212 366 4493 F: 212 366 4498 | GALLERY@NYEHAUS.COM COVER: TONY BERLANT, IS WHAT IT IS (DETAIL), 2011, MIXED MEDIA, 24 x 50.5 IN