Tina Berning One Another
One another by Tina Berning comes after Tina's six-month sabbatical with her family in Kyoto. Tired and hungry for new input, the family opted for an exit from the rat race. That period of slowing down and deepening resulted in Tina's new Kyoto Windows series, exhibited today behind the somewhat hidden windows of the Rivoli façade. The drawings in acrylic and ink on paper reflect Japan's very closed society, which makes a strict distinction between the private and the public: Honne (Japanese for ‘sincerity’) and Tatemae (Japanese for ‘façade’), the former denoting a person's true feelings and the latter the behaviour he displays in public. Japan's highly regulated society keeps ‘true feelings’ indoors. The facades of the houses in Kyoto, therefore, are all pretty much closed off. All windows are sealed with frosted glass and veiled with curtains that have been left untouched for decades, solidified in their drapery, dipped in a heavy patina of faded fabric. And yet, every now and then it seemed like an opening wasn’t entirely impossible. The frozen windows triggered Tina's curiosity. Occasionally, she caught a glimpse of what was going on behind the façades: shadows of residents, figurines on the windowsill.
Behind the facade of curtained walls, inside the gallery, Tina displays her ‘Honne’, an inner world of women portraits that are so characteristic of her. The artist sketched daily in her assigned tatami at a low tea table, sitting on the floor. With no view of the outside world other than the view of the courtyard garden, she was thrown back to her own (inner) world and the pen drawings on paper. Whether the stay in Kyoto influenced her work and approach? ‘Above all, it has made me reflect on my own practice,’ says the artist. She saw her approach mirrored in Japanese traditions, techniques and materials. Working on washi paper sparked her passion for drawing. Being very absorbent by nature, the paper accentuates the fragility of a drawing, since there are no second chances. You have no choice but to gracefully embrace any mistake or misstep made, just as the Japanese Kintsugi technique (to glue shards with gold) teaches us. The “glitches” in Tina's women's faces is what makes them unique, much in the same way the artist bestows emptiness - which, incidentally, also features prominently in Japanese design - on the viewer as a suggestion, a generous invitation to sketch his/her own image of women.
Tina Berning's portraits are a unique, respectful approach to the female body in all its vulnerability. Through the expressive treatment of the figures and built-in voids, the silhouettes regain their autonomy, almost as if they are a counterpoint to the objectification of women. Tina entrusts women's softness as well as their unruliness to found paper, that is marked by traces of times gone by. For it is the spirit in things that matters, Japanese culture taught her. By using objects, you enrich them with experience and they become valuable. Like the patinated curtains that thus connect generations. One another.
Roxane Baeyens
- Location
- Brussels
- Date
- Now open: —
- Vernissage:
- 12/01/2025 between 2 and 6 pm
- Open Sunday:
- 09/02/2025 between 2 and 6 pm
Selected Images
“Honne and tatemae”
