Brad Bernhardt
Outside

August 9th - August 14th By appointment only (11am - 6pm)
Mask attire necessary

Accessibility: Plenty of parking in the neighborhood if not in the driveway. Exhibition is only presented in the backyard, no access and or entry point through the interior of the building. Entrance is throught the side gate directly into the garden. There are no steps to enter.

Amongst a nondescript brick lined backyard in San Francisco’s Bayview neighborhood, a colorful cast of sculptures populate the space, strange surrogate viewers for the brightly hued paintings that surround. Titled simply Outside, Los Angeles based artist Brad Bernhardt’s exhibition in Guerrero Gallery’s backyard space sees the artist reflecting on the peculiarity of this moment, as we all collectively emerge from the safety of our personal bubbles and begin to interact once again, reveling in the communal energy and joy that’s laid dormant for nearly two years while simultaneously tripping over ourselves as we desperately attempt to hone the social skills that have gone unused for so long. 

Bernhardt’s brilliantly colored sculptures are created using the traditional tools and techniques of painting, beginning as two dimensional canvases bedecked in radiating parallel lines or roughly hewn squares which once complete are unstretched, draped and folded to the artist’s liking. The process animates these once flat paintings with a new life or afterlife perhaps, as ghosts of their former paintings past. An uncanny figurative quality resonates through the works, becoming even more pronounced as we recognize that they’re all formed in ways that resemble a human face in profile–meditations on the complex emotional states experienced as we remerge from our Covid chrysalis. 

The artist’s paintings which surround this impromptu viewership, stippled fluorescent visions of Americana feel perfectly at home amongst the sculptures, a familial yet refined color field comprising the paintings, bright brushstrokes of orange, reds and greens pop as they nestle amongst a deep black background. The imagery is pulled largely from iconic advertising lodged within our collective subconscious, resuscitated and reinterpreted with an unfamiliar technique and color palette, questioning implicit hierarchies of imagery and their means of production. And while a nod to mid century pop art is evident, these paintings feel so at home in this exact moment as social media’s annexation of our lives has only increased through the pandemic, the walls of personhood and artistic identity continually clouding and obscuring as we brand and market ourselves, our achievements and anxieties laid bare for the viewing public.