GENERAL HARDWARE – Alex Bierk “Pitfalls and Withdrawals”

Alex Bierk’s solo show opens TODAY at General Hardware Contemporary. I caught up with the artist and GHC Director, Niki Dracos, for a sneak preview. 

By: Stephanie Anne D’Amico

You would never know Alex Bierk had struggled with addiction. The clear-eyed and ebullient artist is a new father with a full-time painting career, and he just mounted his first solo exhibition at General Hardware Contemporary. The show is a significant survey of works from the past two years, and features more than a dozen oil paintings, several works on paper, and a video contributed by the artist’s brother, Jeff. Based on digital snapshots taken during the difficult years of 2002-2006, during which Bierk (and his brother) struggled with substance abuse, these high-realist, black and white paintings are not your typical peek into the violent and exotic world of chemical addiction. On the contrary, the deeply personal object matter is handled with incredible poise and sensitivity. Bierk doesn’t rely on the sensational aspects of drug culture to unsettle his audience; there are no black eyes, bloody noses, or infected injection sites. Instead, “Pitfalls and Withdrawals” offers unresolved juxtapositions, like a tender depiction of leaves from a dying orange tree next to a hand-scrawled list of drug debts.

“Every painting has a story,” explains General Hardware Director, Niki Dracos. Walking through the exhibit, Bierk shares a few of the narratives: he points to a mid-sized canvas depicting a worm’s-eye view of a residential window, and explains that it’s the view from outside his bedroom, the view he had after being forced to leave the house. The gaze is at once longing and prying, trying to regain access to both the physical space of the home, and to the emotional space where the memory of family resides. Depictions of windows, driveways, bottles, and heaps of chalky pills line the walls, with a few potent canvases isolated, much like vivid memories that become branded on your consciousness. These small works, which include Self Portrait, Looking Back (from 2006) (2013), have more than enough psychic weight to hold an entire wall. Incidentally, many of them have already found their way into major corporate collections.

The big leagues aren’t entirely new to Bierk. He was formerly Kim Dorland’s studio assistant, and worked for many years under his father and painter, David Bierk. David was a formative figure in his son’s early artistic practice, and his death in 2002 marked the beginning of a particularly challenging period in Alex’s life. In “Pitfalls and Withdrawals,” a framed painting of the artist’s father occupies an entire wall. David appears to be presiding over the exhibit, but his neutral expression makes it hard to tell if he’s as impressed as the rest of us.

Bierk is astutely aware of the specter of his parents in this body of work. He describes his painting as a way to “make amends” for the wasted years during which he lost both his mother and father. “It still gives me chills to look at this,” he says, pointing to a painting of the exterior of his former family home. For Bierk, these sharp renderings of psychologically charged spaces are far more haunting than the goriest of belt-strapped veins and needles – and I have to agree. There is a hard honesty in these poetic images that is not immediately apparent. On the surface, they are beautifully painted canvases that offer visual delights like the pool of light on a slick road or the fine line of a window grille. Dig deeper, and it becomes clear that by bringing into view a past that is forever inaccessible, these works are razor-sharp reminders of time, people, and opportunities that can never be fully recovered.

Pitfalls and Withdrawals is on view through February 15th, 2014

General Hardware Contemporary is located at 1520 Queen Street West.

SOURCE: Art Bitch | Toronto art review and blog – Read entire story here.