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This is Not a Prada Bag
Kevin Berlin's 'Double Happiness' @ Fu Xin Gallery
- copyright Sarah Hammer, Feb 25,09
Fresh on the heels of Yoko Ono's messianic voyage to Shanghai comes another luminary from the New York art world, Kevin Berlin, with his first Shanghai solo exhibition, "Double Happiness" at Fu Xin Gallery. One of the most internationally acclaimed and famously collected artists in the world, Berlin's work is in the private collections of Kim Basinger, Buzz Aldrin, Henry Buhl, David Letterman, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Quincy Jones, General Motors Corp. and Carnival Cruise Lines. To name a few.
Who knew Kim Basinger was so on the ball?
He was also honoured honored by President Reagan at The White House as a YoungArts Presidential Scholar in 1983.
In spite of (and probably due to) his own vaunted position in the upper echelons on the international art world, Berlin is famous for his satirical send-ups of class structure, status, money, and power in American society, particularly New York. His oil paintings in previous shows like "Slaves of Fashion" (@ the GalleryBar in New York 2007), in their blurry, heavy-handed depictions of high society cocktail parties, seek to capture both the ritzy actuality of the subject matter, combined with the dirty secrets of those in attendance.
With "Double Happiness" Berlin continues to juxtapose the facade of the scene or object with its seedy underbelly, but has shifted his gaze to Shanghai, and addresses greater, aggregate clich®¶s of rapid Chinese economic growth, modernization, consumerism, commoditization, power, status, wealth, social disparity, you get the idea.
Basically, what you have is a New York artist coming to Shanghai for six months and regurgitating a tongue-in-cheek social critique of Chinese materialism -- an outsider telling an insider's story. In other hands, this would raise all sorts of alarm bells, but Berlin is pretty slick in implicating himself at the top end of the modern Shanghainese pyramid of exploitation.
Here is the primary work that greets you upon entrance to the Fu Xin Gallery, entitled "East Meets West":
Inspired by his visit to The Glamour Bar (where else would you go if you're a famous artist in Shanghai), "East Meets West" depicts a typical scene at the bar, but the guests have been rearranged left to right in descending order of status, wealth, and therefore importance and worth. The bookends are 'wealthy Asian business man' and 'anonymous street beggar', with wealthy Asian businessman's wife being one step above the bottom. Pictured next to the businessman is a self-portrait of Kevin Berlin himself, an international, jet-setting James Bond character, complicit in the jubilant exploitation of the un-wealthy.
The title of the work, "East Meets West", refers not to the meeting of two separate cultures but to signify a new global paradigm of Wealth Vs. Poverty. Of course, the artist has the gun.
"East Meets West," presumably, is Berlin's disclaimer for the exhibition, the majority of which is all on the second floor -- his way of saying, "Yes, I know. I'm rich and from New York, take what I'm doing with a grain of salt."
Anyways, "Double Happiness" is comprised of around 30 works of oil on canvas depicting cigarette packs, money, and fake designer bags. The painstakingly detailed recreation of the object -- symbols of wealth, status, and power -- clashes with their inherent worthlessness, and the single objects themselves paradoxically signify both worth and worthlessness. It's all pretty clever.
And so, Kevin Berlin came to Shanghai looking for heart and soul and found a crushed pack of Double Happiness. Take that for what you will.
"Double Happiness" runs until March 4 at the Fu Xin Gallery.
Buns and beauty help artist reveal a city's secrets
By Ma Zhenyan 2009-2-27 NEWSPAPER EDITION
STEAMED buns, cash, cigarettes and counterfeited handbags are the subjects artist Kevin Berlin has chosen to reveal the inner secrets and emotions. Ma Zhenyan looks at his new exhibition
Internationally acclaimed artist Kevin Berlin's solo exhibition "Double Happiness" premieres at the Fu Xin Gallery through next Wednesday. With this portrait series from Shanghai, the New York-born artist delves deep into the city's secrets.
The exhibition features 60 of Berlin's most recent works, divided into three groups - "Steamed Buns and Double Happiness," "Cigarettes and Cash" and "Bags." Each painting tells its own story.
"Every figure in my paintings has a secret. I not only draw what people see, but also the hidden parts," says Berlin. "I'm searching for something you can't find, like Shanghai's secrets."
Berlin records secret motives and emotions with unexpected and provocative impulses of his brush. The nude girl in the black and white oil painting on two canvases "East Meets West," one of the master's favorite pieces, symbolizes the secret desire of a girl at a cocktail party. "This Shanghai girl is perfect in her daily life, but she told a friend that she wanted to be a stripper just for that moment."
The exhibition is the artist's exploration of human desire. Steamed buns, cash, cigarettes and counterfeited handbags are the subjects of his works, and he tries to show us the various desires and happiness that lie in these scattered, trivial fragments of daily life. Although the reasons for happiness may vary from person to person, the themes are the same and are all about human desires.
Fu Xin, the director and curator of Fu Xin Gallery, says that "Double Happiness" is really Berlin's study of happiness.
"It's definitely a beautiful fine art exhibition, but it is also about the artist's trial to ask of a modern society like Shanghai - do you know what happiness is? What makes you really happy? I think it's very sharp and points out what Shanghainese are looking for today."
Also on show is "Lost Heaven," an installation of 23 packs of cigarettes. The installation includes the famous cigarette brands "Double Happiness" and "Chunghwa," which will be familiar to most Shanghai people.
Any Shanghainese will be able to see themselves in Berlin's works.
"I love people. I want to communicate to everybody, I don't want to be selective," says Kevin when asked about the drive behind this show. "I like to include everyone. There is something for people with a complex education, but there is also something for people with no education at all. Everyone is looking for happiness."
Fu thinks "Double Happiness" is about Shanghai culture seen through the eyes of a New York artist with the unique perspective of an outsider but instinctively with an insider's story.
"Berlin's paintings reflect the social changes in modern Shanghai: urban life, women's status, social gaps and Chinese enterprises in modern Shanghai," she says. Berlin studied classical Chinese painting at Yale University in 1988, and won a grant to travel in China in 1989 with the Central Academy of Fine Art in Beijing.
His works can be found in the collections of Kim Basinger, Luciano Pavarotti, Buzz Aldrin, Henry Buhl, David Letterman and Bill and Hillary Clinton. He has appeared in The New York Times, The Miami Herald, USA Today, and CBS Sunday. Berlin was honored by President Reagan at The White House as a "Young Arts Presidential Scholar" in 1983.
"Double Happiness"
Date: through March 4
Address: 87 Moganshan Rd
Admission: Free
Tel: 6227-8043
"DOUBLE HAPPINESS" OPENING PARTY PHOTOS by Lewiss Lu
Kevin Berlin selected to Judge Miss Motors 2008, Milan, Italy
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As seen in East Hampton Star, East Hampton, New York
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“In more than 30 years of operating a gallery
I have rarely encountered an artist as talented,
multifaceted, and ambitious as Kevin Berlin....”
—Douglas Heller, Heller Gallery
From the introduction to the “Heroes” catalog
November, 2005
Kevin Berlin in his studio, Florence, Italy, 2005.
First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton
receiving the Presidential Scholars Foundation's Lyndon Baines Johnson Award,
sculpted by Kevin Berlin, The White House, 1994.
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Maestro Luciano Pavarotti, bronze artist's proof of "Pink Pavarotti"
and the artist, Modena, Italy, 2005.
The artist, bronze artist's proof of "Blue Buzz" and Dr. Buzz Aldrin, Beverly Hills, 2005.
The artist and "The Colossal Bellybutton," Beverly Hills, 1992.
The artist, "Kim Basinger" and Kim Basinger, Los Angeles, 1993.
"Ted Arison," the artist, and Ted Arison, Miami, 1994.
President William Jefferson Clinton and the Artist, The White House, 1994.
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