under construction...

What they think…
“Through the CPC's sixteen-year history, members and students have come and gone, maintaining their ties through no longer in Chicago, or recommending to the Collaborative fellow printmakers whose work is of interest.
The exhibition thus includes not only local artists, but prints by national and international participants as well. (…)

France has a long history of the caricature, so it should come as no surprise that the denizens of Parisian artist Christine Gendre-Bergère's So, Nothing series should be so expressive. Three of the four drypoint works (each 4 x 4 in.) feature a bereted middle-aged figure with a prominent nose and scanty hair, garbed in a cowl-neck sweater and shapeless coat. The drypoint's soft, slightly blurry line is used to effect in the bricks which form the background, and in the subtle differences between the dark vertical texturing of the coat, and the slightly lighter horizontal strokes of the sweater. In the first panel he looks up with a pursed lip, expression skeptical and suggestive of a whole range of inner thought. With only the bricks for background, the whole attention is focused on the figure and his comical, slightly exaggerated features.
The third panel is similar; in this one he smiles, pleased apparently - with what, we can only speculate. The panel between these two shows him playing with folded paper constructions, decked out in a folded paper hat, a second paper hat or sailboat on the railing behind him, the half-filled wineglass in his hand suggesting a state of playful intoxication.
The fourth panel features a similar figure, this time a woman, her face twisted into a comical look of arrested attention as she hears -- what? Whatever it is, she is oblivious to the dangerous tilt of her coffee cup.

Gendre-Bergère brings a playfulness of vision to the art of the print, showing that this traditional medium need not be wholly serious. In each of these her suggestiveness of inner thought leads one back to the work, looking again to speculate on just what her bereted Frenchman might be thinking.”

Katherine R. Lieber

Katherine R. Lieber has edited ArtScope.net's Visual Arts reviews since 1998. Ms. Lieber is Editor and Associate Producer for ArtScope.net.