QUIET BOY

Bergeland took up the subject of masculinity in her painting practice after observing her young son beginning to adopt archetypal male traits around his friends: a resistance toward crying, fear of being seen as sensitive, avoidance of more “feminine” colors or activities. By interviewing and painting the men in this series of portraits, she realized that there was so much left out of the story of the American man's experience; men have money, power, and prestige, but they are often barred from intimate relationships and emotional honesty, saddled with the pressure to provide and constantly prove their masculinity. Quiet Boy takes its title from a poem by Stephen Kampa about the early social pressures boys feel to embrace and exhibit masculine traits or else risk isolation. Through these works, Bergeland explores personal and universal questions around raising children within a patriarchal society and how we may individually and collectively broaden society’s ideas around masculinity.

Each painting in Quiet Boy depicts a portrait of a man in an imagined space. These paintings are larger and less minimalist than her past work, but they retain her classic symbolism, incorporating imagery specific to each man’s experience, and representing the different societal forces impressed upon them. The men portrayed are close friends of the artist (many of them are artists themselves), which enabled her to have a greater level of trust and collaboration with them. As a woman and mother, Bergeland has experienced the all too common barriers and double standards women face in their careers and domestic spheres, but she is also committed to examining the limitations and pressures men experience as well.

The exhibition will include an audio component through which visitors will be able to listen to Bergeland’s interviews with her subjects about their experience of manhood, their upbringing, friendships, insecurities, regrets, sexual experiences, and what it means to be a “good man”.

A panel hosted by HOT•BED will feature the subjects and the artist in conversation about the process of creating the works and masculinity in general.

ABOUT ELIZABETH BERGELAND

At the core of Elizabeth Bergeland’s work is the search for gray matter, and a desire to keep her curiosity intact. She loves placing objects or figures in imagined spaces as a way of asking, “what would happen if...”

Recently, her work has turned toward the topic of masculinity and how we, as Americans, are raising our boys. Working with subjects who identify as men, and approaching the work more as a journalist or social scientist by cataloging long interviews with the people she paints, she is trying to separate the men (that she loves) from the masculinity (that she doesn't always love).

Initiated by the desire to simply “try on” a reversal of traditional roles by instead placing men’s bodies in the canvas from the vantage point of the female gaze, this body of work has moved in the direction of empathy. She is asking what it means to “be a man” and discovering the myriad of ways that masculinity hurts men too.