Toxic Cadmium

Aria Art Gallery is pleased to announce Tarik Berber’s solo exhibition, titled “Toxic Cadmium”, which will open in Florence, in Borgo SS. Apostoli 40r, on the 16th of June 2017, from 6:30 pm.

The Bosnian born artist Tarik Berber returns to Florence with a solo exhibition that holds his last production and in which the main leitmotiv is the presence of the red colour. Paintings, in which the matrix comes from the Pompeian frescoes, in shades and intensity, are made contemporary with a personal point of view, that brings the tracks from the artist’s education and from his research of the human figure, plumbed during his whole career.

His paintings seem mosaics, seem to live trought past identities, transferred to our eyes with the spontaneity of the faces you meet walking in the streets. History of art mixes with contemporaneity in a way that does not cite the ancient masters. The artist doesn’t search for a comparison with the artists of the past, but he deduces from them suggestions he gathers and he transfers these impressions on the canvas through his personal trait.

“In his oil paintings series Toxic Cadmium, Tarik Berber uses that red pigment, derived from "cadmium", that tends to purple. This color is like an element of research for the tendencies of human beings, in which immanence and transcendence live together, like literal extensions of the mind. […]the real “toxicity” enlightened by Berber is based on the darkness which red owns, mentally deeper than the black: something that belongs to our inner darkness, much deeper and impenetrable than any other darkness.”

Alessandra Fròsini

Tarik Berber was born in Banja Luka (Bosnia) in 1980. He moved from his native city and settled with his family in Bolzano. He studied at Accademia di Belle Arti with prof. Adriano Bimbi, Florence. Lives and works in London.