It's hard to define Bernadette Corporation. In loose terms, it is an artist collective that has published both a magazine and a novel in addition to shooting films and creating a subversive fashion label. According to the New York Times, they describe their work thusly: “We call ourselves a corporation because corporations are everywhere, and it impresses people … pretending we are businesspeople while we sleep all day like cats." In fact, their work is rather prolific, if not entirely esoteric and distancing, and new pieces always conjure curiosity. There isn't much to know about the artists involved (who are Bernadette Van-Huy, John Kelsey and Antek Walczak), or when their next work will emerge, or just what it is they're trying to say. That's part of what they seem to be about. But their body of work and commentary on contemporary society remains as enigmatic and relevant today as it was at the corp's inception in the mid-1990s.
New York's Artists Space gallery in SoHo put together a retrospective for the group entitled, Bernadette Corporation: 2000 Wasted Years, and Gideon Ponte was responsible for the exhibition's design. He tells us, "My feeling is that art and retail aren't the best of friends. We built a stand in, a sort of phony pop up shop, far from the discreet minimalism I'm used to seeing in galleries."
Much like the collective's feeling on the current state of fashion ("...fashion has ballooned into something completely different, and we've barely been able to keep up with it. Its relevance to us in terms of vehicle or means of expression or medium has diminished, while its potential for communication is staggering..."), Ponte says, "Maybe I'm part of the problem."
The Bernedette Corporation retrospective runs from now until December 16, 2012.
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