Text:
John and June Allcott Gallery: Terry Berlier - New Works
29 November 2012 – 11 January 2013
Exhibition reception: Thursday, 29 November, 6-8 pm
Terry Berlier’s work investigates how the passage of time and construction of history mediate our understanding of ingenuity and progress. She produces sculptures that often incorporate sound, kinetics, participation and installation as well as cyanotypes and drawings. She utilizes found materials, technologies that are both vernacular and modern, appropriated detritus from everyday life and common building materials. She is particularly interested in making visible technology’s vulnerabilities and illustrating how easily modern inventions can become footnotes to a bygone era. She frequently utilizes subtle humor embedded in both material choices and content in order to not simply critique technological evolution but to highlight its fallibility and connection to the evolution of the physical world. As innovations alter how we perceive and interact with the world, are we coming closer to or farther from understanding each other and the world around us? In continually mining this question she finds the memory of time and history preserved in the natural environment surrounding us as a major theme in her practice. She is also interested in contemporary sites where the cyclical nature of energy consumption gets recorded. The traces and clues discovered in these investigations reveal unrelenting patterns of the past and remind us to question how we might use that evidence to ethically move forward.
She has exhibited in solo and group shows both nationally and internationally including the Contemporary Jewish Museum of San Francisco, Catherine Clark Gallery, Babel Gallery in Norway, Richard L. Nelson Gallery in Davis CA, Center for Contemporary Art in Sacramento, Kala Art Institute Gallery in Berkeley, San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery, Natural Balance in Girona Spain and FemArt Mostra D’Art De Dones in Barcelona Spain. Her work has been reviewed in the BBC News Magazine, San Francisco Chronicle and in the book ‘Seeing Gertrude Stein’ published by University of California Press. Her work is in several collections including the Progressive Corporation in Cleveland Ohio, Kala Art Institute in Berkeley California and Bildwechsel Archive in Berlin Germany. She has received numerous residencies and grants including the Zellerbach Foundation Berkeley, Arts Council Silicon Valley Artist Fellowship, Michelle R. Clayman Institute for Gender Research Fellow at Stanford University, Recology San Francisco, Hungarian Multicultural Center in Budapest Hungary, Exploratorium: Museum of Science, Art and Human Perception in San Francisco, Arts Council Silicon Valley Artist Fellowship, California Council for Humanities California Stories Fund and the Millay Colony for Artists.
Terry Berlier received a Masters in Fine Arts in Studio Art from University of California, Davis and a Bachelors of Fine Arts from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. She currently is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Art and Art History at Stanford University.
Admission: Free
Gallery Hours:
Monday-Friday, 8 am-5 pm
UNC Art Department: http://art.unc.edu/index.htm
Artist website: http://www.terryberlier.com/
For more information please contact Jina Valentine: valentine@unc.edu
Image Credit: Reclaimed Time, salvaged wood, 2' x 2' x 2", 2012, courtesy of the artist