Fandom - Tina Berning

The Passengers - 2009

"My main object of interest in drawing is the figure. I’ve tried it all: landscape, cats and dogs, still life, but I always stuck with [the human] figure. The human body, its perception, its inadequacy, and its fundamental relation to self-determination." Tina Berning


I first discovered Berlin-based illustrator through Instagram, which she uses as a visual diary type platform, sharing processes, studio insights and sketchbook scraps as well as finished pieces, something which really drew me in as I am fascinated by learning about other people's processes of working.

Tina began as a graphic designer working a lot within the music industry designing album covers, however in 2000 she took a shift towards her own illustrative practice. Her body of work is incredibly impressive, vast amounts of raw and expressive drawings and paintings, each beautifully executed, she knows how to make minimal lines count. Tina has exhibited in solo shows in New York, Berlin, Toronto, Amsterdam and Japan, as well as being commissioned for advertisements by brands such as Mercedes Benz, Tiffany & Co and Shiseido. Her work regularly appears in high profile magazines like Vogue, The New York Times, Die Zeit and Playboy.

Tina creates her work using inky washes, fine lines, found papers, confident paint strokes and occasional hand written text. Speaking about the words in her work she says:
"In my work I play a lot with associations. While I am drawing I am listening to music, and suddenly, a word turns up that is exactly what I am drawing in that moment, or that gives the image a new turn when I add it. The words are traces of my perception while drawing. Some words reveal an entry [point] to the subject of the drawings, some are signs of a further layer of meaning that can also be solved subjectively. Only the viewers are in a position to do this."

To me her work speaks a lot about collections and ephemera. Tina Berning speaks about how her inspiration comes from magazines, old photo books, flea markets - 
"The people are captured motionless, sometime, somewhere, and all of a sudden, they stare back at you reanimated from a long time ago."
 I am a bit of a hoarder, I love old bookshops, I have box files upon box files of vintage maps, strangers postcards, old stamps and posters, handwritten scraps I've found on the streets of foreign countries, cutouts from black and white magazines, etc etc etc. I have always been very precious and too scared to use these in my illustration, however Tina's work, even though it is not collage based work inspires me to do so. My favourite artist Basquiat shares a similar trait to Berning in that I can sense from their pieces that a lot of different sources have been used to influence the final outcome. Engrossing yourself in information and imagery will help create a rich body of work. 

Another thing I adore about watching Tina's process on Instagram is the art classes she runs for 6 year olds at her studio in Berlin on Friday's. They experiment through play, drawing on mirrors, making collages, all in all making a mess. Tina uses this experience in a collaborative way, sometimes combining her illustration with childrens. This practice must be really inspiring, childlike curiosity and not being too precious are two really important values in illustration, which I think Tina's work excels at. 

I'm obsessed with people-watching, it is something that plays a huge role in my work. I think this is part of the reason I am so drawn to her work, the idea of the mysterious characters and stories waiting to be told hidden behind the faces of the delicate inky people she depicts. Human connection and the idea of the individual is definitely a theme of her work. She is interested in drawing the figure, how to represent the human body and the context in which they exist. Fashion is another major theme of her work, also having done many campaigns for fashion brands and magazines such as Vogue.  Berning talks about how fashion plays a large role, but she is interested in the clothes themselves, not the branding (she explains how she spends hours sanding the brand names off her sunglasses).
 I love fashion for the system itself, the cultural indication, and the aesthetic possibilities. I am interested in the interplay of volume and lines, the architecture of wrapping, and the expression of disguise.

"It is the quality of drawing in general that omission leaves space for imagination. I start to tell a story and the viewer can complete it."