Imagine you are a bear. You are just waking up after many months, and the light peeking in from the far end of your frozen cave looks almost warm and inviting. And you are hungry, looking a little gaunt and pale in the ice mirror, so you chance it outdoors to find how the world has changed after four long months of darkness and desolation. Besides the stubborn crunch of stale snow beneath your paws, you notice the faint, busy breeze rattling the threadbare trees, the whisper of other animals dashing through the woods nearby… but otherwise, things are quiet. Winter has not, in fact, left the land. Still…

...As your eyes adjust, as you look more intently towards your surroundings, you perceive the unmistakable signs of Spring beginning to bloom in all directions. From the tip of a branch points a new bud, caught in the drip from an icicle melting overhead. The air is cool but no longer cold, and it smells of something both rich and earthy. From where you stand, in all directions, your world, once grey, is becoming colorful. The sun’s light from beyond the canopy brings into focus all the ways in which Life is coming into its own again, shedding the weight of the past to thrive in a new season of abundance. You feel happy.

This is the world of Thaw Pieces, the new exhibition of collage artist Joe Bertino. Using man-made objects as an allegory for the natural, the series features eighteen works colliding Art Deco artifacts of interior design, to suggest organic regeneration: a vase sheds its skin to reveal its skeleton; a thermos hangs from a lamp like a sprouting seedling. All around, an abundance of muted, cool colors are punctuated by minute swellings of warm pastels—pinks and yellows, evocative of the rouge of a cheek or yolk of an egg. Thaw Pieces examines the minute, precious moments of new life emerging that may go unnoticed as we focus on our daily survival through an oppressive climate. It is a reminder that the death and isolation of Winter should not be seen as a burden but a necessary sacrifice to cultivate new growth in the Spring.

About the artist

In 2019, Joe Bertino was obsessed with the collage works of Agnes Montgomery, particularly her contributions for the Panda Bear album Person Pitch. He picked up an anthology of contemporary collage works including hers, marvelled at what he saw, and thought, “I can do this.” Since then, his work has been featured in exhibitions in NYC, New Orleans, Philadelphia, and most recently London.

The biggest compliment the artist has received for his work is, “I know there’s a story here, I just don’t know what it is.” portraying his process for resolving anxieties around relationships, duty, and mental health. The details of his struggles as a person with OCD are deeply coded into his art.

Joe Bertino typically builds frantic and colorful, but precisely composed scenes which drive one’s attention towards a thematic “totem” then reveal a larger, sweeping energy enveloping that totem. His works are often described as maximalist. The mantra guiding his creative process is “the more you look, the more you see.”

The spiritual value collage provides is to invalidate our hardwired but arbitrary expectations for the symbols and meanings we’ve grown accustomed to.

Thaw Pieces is the artist’s first solo show in New York City, his home town.