When Judith Bernstein painted “Seal of Disbelief” in 2017, I’d think about that she envisioned it as a historic portray — a cautionary file of the hazards of would-be oligarchs and their character cults that reminds us: by no means once more! That the work remains to be so related is chilling, however like the primary time round, it stays a supply of consolation that we’ve Bernstein to guide us by means of.
Lengthy earlier than Donald Trump ran for workplace, Judith Bernstein used her artwork to sentence those that abuse energy, from the museum to the White Home, and to disclose them for who they are surely: dickheads, cockmen, schlong faces, and, ultimately, what she would name “death heads.”
Judith Bernstein, “Money Shot – Yellow” (2016), acrylic and oil on canvas
Public Fears is a mini retrospective of kinds. Filling one massive gallery from flooring to ceiling, plus a small area close to the doorway, it traces Bernstein’s political work from the Sixties — when she was taking up Richard Nixon’s lies in works like “First National Dick” (1969), that includes a phallus flying an American flag — to her current day-glo work, such because the searing neon “Death Heads (Four Eyes on Hot Pink Ground)” (2024). It additionally consists of “Three Panel Vertical” (1977), a trio of drawings of large phallic screws whose well-deserved “fuck you” to the aggressive misogyny underlying patriarchal energy acquired her faraway from an ostensibly feminist Philadelphia museum exhibition on the time and sidelined her within the artwork world for many years. That is what makes Bernstein so essential: She’s talked the speak and walked the stroll, and suffered the results. She is aware of each the stakes and the urgency of talking out towards injustices, and she or he continues to take action.
And for anybody who questions the efficacy of Bernstein’s challenge as a result of it’s being introduced in a business gallery: Given the chance, she’ll gladly take it to the better public. So, artwork establishments, the ball’s in your court docket. For now, although, you possibly can see her work in an area that’s open to everybody 5 days per week, totally free.
Set up view of Judith Bernstein, “Three Panel Vertical” (1977), charcoal on paper, in Public Fears at Kasmin Gallery, New York
Judith Bernstein: Public Fears continues at Kasmin Gallery (509 West twenty seventh Road, Chelsea, Manhattan) by means of February 15. The exhibition was organized by the gallery.
