I am not sure how Eva and I actually met, other than the fact it was on Instagram – that great social media leveling platform, where the entrenched art world hierarchies have all but been obliterated. What is certain is how much I’ve grown to love not only the art of Hungarian-born, Vienna-based, Eva Beresin; but, even more so (if that’s possible), the artist herself – one of the kindest, most generous people I know.

Her paintings cloak both herself and various members of her immediate family in lighthearted, riotously colorful scenarios, often of the domestic variety. As most of our relatives are so universally…umm… “special”, why look any further? But don’t be fooled.

The mundane daily occurrences of life, shopping, sharing meals, and playing games together come across as funny – mostly by way of cartoonishly distorted, engorged hands, feet and facial features. Yet lurking not too far underneath the surface, the images are imbued with a more melancholic notion of the absurd, grotesque, and forlorn. Beresin explains: “I found myself unattractive for a lifetime – only my hands, feet, and skin were highlights [for me]. Maybe that’s why unconsciously it always comes out that way. Hands and especially feet have a very strong expression for me anyway. Both my parents [who suffered unspeakably in concentration camps] were extremely elegant and blessed with great taste.”

“The story of where I come from and who I am today seems an inexhaustible source.”

The wedding of humor and horror, contradictory impulses wherein one laughs in the face of impending old age, bodily decay, and sundry tragedies, are nothing less than survival methods in a world typified by gratuitous violence and unprovoked death; something I can readily relate to since entering similar, excessively unpleasant territory myself. But ageing, however ungracefully, is better than the alternative I think. Beresin brings to mind, more than any other artist for me, the works of Belgian painter James Ensor (1860-1949). Little traveled in his lifetime, he dwelt in a bizarre, wildly colorful landscape, primarily peopled by those closest to him. Eva replaces the masks frequently featured Ensor’s works with everyday faces of her friends and family – in anything resembling a state of flattery. They also share an acute sense of aggressive sarcasm and scatology – words used by Los Angeles County Museum of Art director Michael Govan to characterize Ensor.

On a more sobering note, if that’s possible, Beresin previously staged a 2015 at show at Charim Galerie in Vienna (along with an astounding publication) titled “My Mother’s Diary: Ninety-Eight Pages”, published by Verlag für moderne Kunst. In her own words, as written in a letter to me last year:

I exhibited my biggest project, the artistic implementation of my mother’s diary, as written after her liberation from Auschwitz. I could only bring myself to read and process the diary after her death, which I then converted into a series of paintings that served as a multi-layered representation of her history. My work in general depicts me and my perception of my body, which I place virtually within the time and location of Auschwitz in order to retrace my family’s tracks. Sometimes in the paintings, I am moving naked and vulnerable, in order to be able to start a dialogue with those I was never able to actually meet. My courage to show all of this somehow makes me laugh and comforts me because, despite all the hardships, we are still here. The story of where I come from and who I am today seems an inexhaustible source.”

In the diaries, her mother spoke of being numbed by the matter-of-fact ordinariness of the daily atrocities meted out as “nothing special”, including being made to stand naked with her hands raised in front of Josef Mengele [German SS officer known as “The Angel of Death”], of watching countless murders on the spot of anyone who could not manage the inhumane quantities of work, and of not knowing which, if any, family members managed to survive. After her release, she wrote she was “freed but still imprisoned, full of doubt and confidence with an indifference to nature”. The art of Eva Beresin, in the face of such unfathomable hideousness, offers solace and hope in a world that seemingly goes from worse to worse, without respite. Something for which I am eternally grateful.
 

Kenny Schachter.

She has been represented by Charim Galerie Vienna since 2015.

In 2015 she exhibited her biggest project so far, the artistic implementation of her mother’s diary as she wrote after her liberation from Auschwitz at Charim Galerie

She also published a book titled “Ninety-eight pages” with “Verlag für moderne Kunst” publishing house

Shows and Fairs

2002 Expression Vienna

2002 Expression New Jersey

2003 beSichter Vienna

2003 Perspective Vienna

2004 beSichter2 Vienna

2005 New Images  Vienna House Wittgenstein

2008 Flatware Vienna

2009 New Faces Vienna

2010 Flatware2 Vienna

2015 Eighty-nine pages Vienna Charim Gallerie

2016 Parallel Art fair Vienna for Charim Gallerie “galleries choice”

2017 Parallel Art fair Vienna for Charim Gallerie “galleries choice”

2017 Out of the studio Vienna Charim Gallerie

2019 Parallel Art fair Vienna  Charim Gallerie

2019 Transfer  Vienna Vienna Charim Gallerie

2019 Vienna Calling Weihnukka Charim Gallerie

2020 Felix Artfair Only Paint curated by Kenny Schachter

2020 Back again Open Days Charim Gallerie