BERTOLDI: REVISITED

These images send my eyes to spasms. The eyes and limbs and petals and planes and bombs and guns and bugs and noses and nooses….and…and…and…

All of it blends together into a mass of black and white. Nathan Bertoldi’s work over the last seven years is captivating and frightening. Assembled from a vast collection of acquired images each collage offers a commentary on the modern experience that is known only to the viewer. There is just so much for one’s brain to take in. Image upon image of romance, separation, war, history, science, nature and more keep the viewer bouncing in a constant mind melt of cognition, a test of one’s schema.

When I first saw his work in mass back in 2003 at the solo show opening in Tulare, California (The Fresno Art Museum later exhibited the work in January, 2006) I was immediately impressed with the continuity of the pieces on display. From the center of the gallery one could spin a full 360 degrees and have the sense that the show was made up of pieces from one continuous mural - identical frames and paper and copy spanning the walls. Step closer to the glass and the themes of each piece stand alone. Step even closer and the images that make up each collage splatter your senses like an imploding grenade – shrapnel flying in on itself in a massive spiraling pattern that leads back to Bertoldi.

His work is magnificent. Poetic.

Revisited
for Nathan Bertoldi

This image was tight
Intertwined
Cryptic
And full of hope
With eyes
And hands
Reaching out
Reaching up
Offering something more
Than a lost ignorance
More than a blind observance
Of humanity’s movements

The eyes were watching you
The hands were touching you
You were moved to another plane
While there across the room
In the corner of a widow’s web
Was a gallows
Built for the dead man hanged there
Executed in a leap of faith
While an organ grinder
Played a dirge
And his monkey collected the change

The details of this vision
The scent of the flowers in the room
The sounds of silence bombs in free fall
Demand a response
Temples and skyscrapers beware
From behind bars
A Chimpanzee is watching
And hidden in the crags a snake readies to strike