Man Corn

Over the past three years, Josh Bernstein has cultivated a complex symbolic language related to global exploration, outsider status, and the grotesque. Textiles, prints, photography, performance, sculpture, and drawing are all tied together in a web of meanings that are utterly engrossing even as they defy precise explanation. The centerpiece of his exhibition is a large red sail made from pieces of mens' shirts with an intricate batik coat of arms showing a double-headed eagle attempting to eat itself. The same bicephalous bird appears in two accompanying woodcuts where the print made from wooden block reflects its source and completes the symmetry of the images. At the center of the room is a tent of sorts made from a swirling construction of reeds that supports a carved gourd at its apex. These baroque works are intentionally allusive, yet undeniably visceral with organic textures and colors. The symmetry and repeated shapes of their forms imply a closed circuit of meanings and associations that likewise fold in on themselves in infinite self-reflection. Artist Josh Bernstein opens his exhibition in the Visual and Dramatic Arts Emergency Room Gallery in Sewall Hall February 2, 2012. The exhibition will be on view through March 15 with artist talk February 2, 7:00 p.m. (Sewall Hall 301) and opening reception at 8:30 p.m. (Sewall Hall 402).