NYAB Event - Lauren Simkin Berke “Small Items Enclosed”

Lauren Simkin Berke “Small Items Enclosed”

Foley Gallery

This event has ended.

Since the invention of the camera people have used photography to document their lives, developing tangible myths of their existence for future generations. Yet today family photographs are no longer the prized possessions they once were. Berke’s work is concerned with the collecting, archiving, dissecting and drawing of people and places from discarded documents. Berke has been drawing, in ink on paper, from found photographs for almost a decade, and has used these ink drawings to generate works with paint, print and mixed media.

Small Items Enclosed is made up of several large paintings and over 100 small figures in three-dimensional environments. The paintings and miniature sculptural worlds starts with the artist’s drawings, which are likewise based on found photographs. Sources include Victorian studio portraits, 20th century snapshots, high school yearbook headshots and vacation photos. Removed from their original photographic settings, these tiny drawn characters occupy a variety of tableaux that were created through a process of drawing, painting and assembling of found objects. Shoes horns become mountains, desk drawers are green vistas and wooden boxes transformed into boats. These works may bring to mind whimsy but they also speak to place and past.