Robin Bernat’s Video Installation at Kemper Museum

Sunday, 01 July 2007 11:49

Kansas City, MO - Robin Bernat explores longing, solitude, and romantic notions of love and beauty in her video works. In American Pastoral (2001), Bernat combines images of the American South with indigenous folk and gospel music and addresses her profound grief in a personal quest for solace. The exhibition American Pastoral by Robin Bernat is on view July 13–September 30, 2007, at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art. Admission to the Kemper Museum is free.

Bernat created American Pastoral after her boyfriend died in a tragic camping accident in Argentina. In this 45-minute, five-part work, the artist examines spiritual longing, faith, grief, desire, and grace, while searching for transcendence through a deep connection to nature and place. Images of baptism, fireworks, and rolling pastoral landscapes combine with sounds of whispered poetry and writings (including Tender Buttons by Gertrude Stein) and hymnals and religious spirituals, creating a layered sensory experience in the gallery. Bernat, who appears in this three-channel video installations, surrenders to grief in her search for comfort in this hauntingly beautiful and poetic piece.

A native of Monroe, Louisiana, Bernat is an Atlanta-based artist and poet. Her artwork has been included in the 2000 Whitney Biennial exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, NY, and in Film/Video: Georgia (2003/04) at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia in Atlanta, among others. She has also published a number of books of her poetry.

Bernat generously gave American Pastoral to the Kemper Museum after its premier showing at the Museum in 2003.

About the Kemper Museum
Kansas City’s acclaimed, free contemporary art museum, the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art opened in 1994 and draws more than 130,000 visitors each year. The Museum boasts a rapidly growing permanent collection of modern and contemporary works by artists from around the world. The Museum hosts temporary exhibitions, film and video series, lectures, concerts, children’s workshops, and other creative programs designed to both educate, inspire, and challenge. For more information, visit www.kemperart.org.