Installation photo credit: Jeff McLane

Opening Reception: Saturday, November 23, 4-6 pm

Vielmetter Los Angeles is pleased to present Lapdogs and Fools, London-based artist Sara Berman’s first solo exhibition with the gallery on view from November 23, 2024 to January 25, 2025.

The exhibition features a close-knit and captivating collection of recent oil paintings on linen and a short film collaboration with filmmaker Clare Macdonald.

Working with the trope of the Harlequin as “Trickster Whore,” Berman examines the societal constructs of the female experience. Continuing her exploration and personification of the Harlequin within her paintings, Berman further reimagines herself as other various characters: the Pierrot, the Fool, the Hoodie, the Aviatrix, the Renaissance Man, and the Fencer. Berman uses these performative characters as a type of auto-fiction to further fuel a narrative that boldly seeks to challenge the construct of the female experience and rejects the objectification of women.

The delicacy of the presentation, grounded in soft hues, graceful brushwork, and filigreed layering, supposes a gentle aesthetic that belies the violent physicality of its making and the immediacy of the figures themselves. Within the paintings, the figures are hidden in plain sight; caught in various poses and postures, assuming the gaze. The characters depicted convey a tragicomical gamut of emotions: fear, grace, longing, and loss, allowing for a confrontational but reflective visual engagement.

While primarily a painter, Berman’s practice also includes textiles, weaving, and the construction/ deconstruction of costumes (which often appear in the paintings and reflect her former career as a fashion designer). She also collaborates with filmmakers — wherein such films become part of the fabric of the work. In her most recent collaborative film, entitled Lapdogs and Fools, Berman and filmmaker and fellow artist Clare Macdonald investigate the complex, wearing, sometimes intolerable conditions of existing as queer, non-male artists and mothers. Together, they realize a beautiful but absurd world where the rules of existence feel very real, and the endeavor of the central character to navigate this world is punishing and irrational.

Aiming to reflect our current times while incorporating historical influences, Berman’s practice addresses the personal, the political, the celebration, and the horrors of being who we are as individuals in this moment of our collective history.

Sara Berman, born in the UK in 1975, obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree in Fashion Design from Central Saint Martins in 1999. Subsequently, she founded and managed her eponymous fashion brand for 15 years. In 2016, Sara Berman completed her Master of Fine Arts in Painting at the Slade School of Fine Art. Berman has exhibited her work in London, Hong Kong, Los Angeles, Milan, Miami, New York, Palm Beach, and Rotterdam; most recently in group presentations at Hauser & Wirth, London, Cedric Bardawil, London, Volta, London and Larsen Warner, Stockholm. Her paintings are included in such collections and institutions as AMOCA Wales, the House of KOKO in London, the Poort Visser Collection in the Netherlands, and The Maison Estelle in London. Sara Berman currently lives and works in London.