I’ll bring you to life 2015

Editor: Jana Brike's "I'll Bring You To Life," created in 2015, is an oil painting that immediately strikes me as both tender and unsettling. The intimate portrayal of two figures, faces pressed together, is contrasted by the vivid red accents and a hint of something almost…vampiric. What do you see in this piece? Curator: Oh, what a luscious puzzle! I think Brike here offers a complex reflection on intimacy, doesn’t she? The title itself, "I’ll Bring You To Life," has this promise, this delicious threat lurking beneath it all. And the red – that gorgeous, almost aggressively applied red – is it blood? Or just the flush of desire? Perhaps, and more excitingly, it's both? It reminds me of those bittersweet, sometimes dangerous depths we wade into when we connect with another human being, don't you think? Does that redness speak to you of life? Or of something else? Editor: It does feel…ambivalent. Life-giving, perhaps, but also like a taking of life, too. The vulnerability is intense. Curator: Exactly! Think about the pre-Raphaelites and their languid, ethereal figures. There is a echo, yet Brike drags them into a darker, more honest light. The detail is exquisite - like a modern day fairy tale painting, turned inside out. Do you notice how they're not quite sleeping, not quite awake? That liminal space is where transformation happens, where the old self gives way…perhaps a little violently…to the new. Editor: That’s fascinating; I hadn’t thought of it that way. I was so caught up in the almost fairytale-like quality of it, but it's more complex. Curator: Aren't we all fairytales that grew thorns? And that, my dear, is what makes it so haunting, so delicious, and so powerfully resonant, isn't it?