Anna Bjerger: Da Capo at Paradise Row

Da Capo' is a series of new paintings by Anna Bjerger. Her images, varied scenes executed in loose, vivid gestures, pose puzzles for the viewer. Painted from photographs rather than from life, their subjects are derived from out-of-date reference books, instruction manuals, gardening books and magazines, possessing little overtly in common with one another. Their feeling is both familiar and anonymous, intimate yet curiously disconnected. Unmoored from their original contexts and unsettling each other's narratives, the meanings of the images become slippery and ambiguous. Bjerger's pictures call attention to the physicality of their medium. Paint is applied wet on wet in broad brushstrokes, building to areas of thick impasto, to drips that slide down unchecked and to painterly surfaces detached from their contents. The speed with which the works have been painted seem to strive after the instantaneous quality of photography yet all the while assert the transformative nature of painting.