Cindy Bernard: Things Change, Things Stay the Same

Richard Telles Fine Art announces Things Change, Things Stay the Same, an exhibition of two major projects by Cindy Bernard. In her conceptually driven work, Bernard investigates ways to document and communicate ordinary experience. Often beginning with a familiar object such as a security envelope or a scrap quilt, Bernard develops specific processes to explore the esoteric possibilities of our everyday material culture. She experiments with old and new forms of representation—including painting, photography, and video—to distort what we think we know, inviting questions on the truth of appearances. This exhibition features an early installation of photographic prints, Security Envelope Grid (1987-1993), and Bernard’s first ever series of watercolors, Quilt (Gladys Osmond, 2013) (2016-17). Though differing in scope and subject matter, both works are meditations on the complex and continually shifting relationships between social and economic structures, personal and collective histories. Bernard initiated the watercolors when she encountered an intricate quilt made by a distant relative, Gladys Osmond. Studying the asymmetrical assemblage of oddly shaped fabric pieces, Bernard noticed how the quilt represented a range of goods imported into a small town in Newfoundland—fabric, clothing, bedding. The handmade blanket also indicated a struggling economy; scarce resources seemed to influence Osmond’s aesthetic decisions. As she was leaving for a residency at the MacDowell Colony, Bernard impulsively photographed the quilt. At MacDowell, she began using the images to recreate the fabric panels in watercolors. With this delicate and unpredictable medium, Bernard paints plaid, paisley, and flower patterns alongside luminous washes of pure color. Eschewing any urge to make exact reproductions, she denotes overly complex patterns in the quilt with simple grey. The resulting works are at once abstract, representational, and expressive. Through this process, Bernard simultaneously decodes and encrypts an enigmatic piece of family history.