Tigers Above – Tigers Below

Jesse Bercowetz

Tigers Above – Tigers Below

wood, and acrylic paint; approximately 60 inches high and 48 inches in diameter

Made out of wood, found objects and painted in red acrylic, Tigers Above – Tigers Below depicts a giant strawberry, recalling the psychedelic and surrealistic song “Strawberry Fields Forever” composed by John Lennon and sung by The Beatles. Bercowetz describes the sculpture thus: it tells “a story of a woman running away from tigers. She runs and runs and the tigers are getting closer and closer. When she comes to the edge of a cliff, she sees some vines there, so she climbs down and holds on to the vines. Looking down, she sees that there are tigers below her as well. She then notices that a mouse is gnawing away at the vine to which she is clinging. She also sees a beautiful little bunch of strawberries close to her, growing out of a clump of grass. She looks up and she looks down. She looks at the mouse. Then she just takes a strawberry, puts it in her mouth, and enjoys it thoroughly. Tigers above, tigers below.” Nostalgic in quality, the sculpture presents an emotional state in which, to quote Lennon, “nothing [feels] real and nothing to get hung about.”

Jesse Bercowetz graduated from the Art Institute of Chicago. He is a 2009 Fellow in Interdisciplinary Work from the New York Foundation for the Arts. He is a 2010 MacDowell Colony Fellow and was recently awarded his second Jerome Fellowship. His work has been reviewed in the New York Times, Teme Celeste, the New Yorker, and Art Forum. Selected exhibition venues include: The Brooklyn Museum, The Drawing Center, White Columns, PS1 / MoMA, all in New York; Galerie Michael Janssen, Berlin; The Happy Lion, Los Angeles; and Art Basel. He recently presented a new large-scale sculpture in the exhibition Next Wave At The Brooklyn Academy of Music, curated by Dan Cameron. His collaborative work was recently on view at The Headlands Center for Art, Saulsalito, CA and Mass MoCA, North Adams, MA. He is represented by Derek Eller Gallery, NYC. Bercowetz lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.