David Berkowitz Chicago on the Art of Painting

David Berkowitz Chicago

The contemporary painter David Berkowitz Chicago is a widely acknowledged naïve artist, with his own recognizable naive style, painting the memories of his childhood in primary colors. During the last 20 years in which he painted in a naive style, David Berkowitz Chicago exhibited his paintings in several galleries and public buildings in the US, and abroad. His work is in possession of private persons, naive art collectors, and institutions. Here, the artist shares his view on the art of painting.

When art takes a look within itself, then it is possible to call such an approach introverted. A great deal of the 20th-century art production emerged in direct dialogue with art, in interaction with its language and history. It can, therefore, appear to some, that many contemporary works of art primarily comment on the historical development of art, its indirect and immediate precursor. It's as if they are in some lasting controversy and resistance with them, or they admire and worship them. Many artists are looking for new ways within the well-known media. David Berkowitz Chicago mostly does oil and acrylic paintings.

In the desire to liberate the term art of painting from the burden of the past, we don’t rely on any specific artistic style, historical epoch or recent artistic trends. In a way, the name of this collection is desidologized. David Berkowitz Chicago shares in an interview for Patch, that he wants to avoid labeling art as an advanced self-conservative, which implies the terms good or bad art. This enables us to have a more unobtrusive view on modernism, neomodernism, and postmodernism - the most commonly classified works of this category.

The difference between old and new art, realism and modernism, which was expressed clearly by the most prominent advocates of modernism, American critic Clement Greenberg - While realistic art conceals the media by using art to hide art, modern art uses art to draw attention to art itself - can easily be applied to most part of modern and contemporary art today. The dictate of autoreferences, the insistence on the particularities of particular media, and ultimately the articulation of the work of art into the idea of the work, are all results of the same search and looking into their own innermost - the art media itself, which have been defining modern and contemporary art over the decades.

David Berkowitz Chicago Portrays Strength and Frailty

Chicago based artist David Berkowitz is an established painter with a peculiar style that is easy to recognize, and impossible not to love. This contemporary painter is distinguished by an original and unmistakable stylistic independence. The main motives in David Berkowitz’s work are nature and man. Somehow they complement each other so perfectly, that at times you simply can’t tell where one begins and the other ends. Clarity and precision, great use of light and unique technique, are just some of the things that make David Berkowitz Chicago one of the greatest contemporary painters.

His latest exhibition consists of a series of self-portraits, portraits, and human body display. In his work, David Berkowitz Chicago brings an inherent feeling. The suffering of man and nature is his preoccupation and eternal inspiration. In his compositions, he brings the relationship and contrast, the struggle of human toughness and the agility of nature, in balance. The body, with a lot of power, is often put in an unimaginable position, but it is still null and void compared to something higher. Therefore, his works are calm and serene.

Through the work of David Berkowitz Chicago, you can feel the strength of the muscles and the voice. It is possible to hear the cry and then stand before the silent photograph. And while you’re still hearing it inside your head, you’ll notice water. The artist depicts divine walking on the surface, while the water is intact, like glass. It mirrors the reality that brings balance and symmetry. He becomes one with the water, as he springs from it, and pounds in it. When he breaks the surface, he feels helpless and is reduced to a mirror that blurts the artistic moment. As a contrast to the above, the paintings also show his other side, his perfection that defies the weight of the human body.

The human body is strong but fragile. It's powerful but null and void. It is the place where the contradictions that are perfectly harmonized meet so that they make the ideal state. The body is a fascination and a medium in which artists achieve almost unimaginable things. David Berkowitz Chicago depicts the human body in his paintings, reshaping it to the most basic and most vulnerable form.