Humble 6

Bernard's 'Humble' series is a blunt, but astonishing passage in photo realism. The artistic decisions represented are concise and contain no incomprehensible visual rhetoric, and yet they penetrate a deep mystery into the viewer, illiciting many of us to interpret them as more literal objects. They are merely depictions an amorphous hunk of clay, in the center of the page, either resting on a flat plane parallel to the frame, or suspended without any direct explanation. However treating the paper as if it were the platform on which the clay rests, one feels its deep spatial imposition into the viewer's own space. Bernard's intense, meticulous technical devotion to the interdimensional sculpture makes all of the persuasion necessary. Every stroke, virtually imperceptibly micro, countours the space as no mere photograph can. Bernard has invented a format that does nothing to obfuscate his virtually inhuman artistic abilities.

In 'Humble 6' Dumaine gives us strengthened awareness of the degree of work to which these images are manifested, contouring the clay itself with hundreds of traces of his own fingers. The evidence that this is a creation of conscious, albeit perhaps a little unconscious, illuminates his laborious presence in all of the work, as the obsessive pencil rendering has become ever more photographic. I feel this image is a remarkable success of decisive and skillful practice, and I am eager to see what comes next.