Artist | Bernardo Vallarino
@bernardovallarinoart
Bernardo Vallarino is a Colombian-American mixed-media sculptor and installation artist interested in geopolitical issues of violence and human suffering. His works reflect his observations on the hypocrisy he perceives existing between the rhetoric of human life and the violent behavior of humanity. With his artworks, Vallarino strives to engage his audience visually but also morally and philosophically, finding inspiration in history, the media, his personal experiences, and his lifelong interest in insects and entomology. Vallarino, a NALAC (National Association of Latino Arts and Cultures) fellow, graduated with a BFA in sculpture from Texas Christian University, an MFA in the same field from Texas Woman’s University, and is the current coordinator of Fort Worth Art Collective and a board member at Artes De La Rosa. He has exhibited widely at galleries and nonprofit spaces in Texas, Oklahoma, and York, England. Vallarino received the 2020 SMU’s Moss/Chumley North Texas Artist Award from the Meadow’s Museum of Art and has displayed artwork at the Amarillo Museum of Art, Arlington Museum of Art, and most Recently at the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas.
In Lamentación, the artist Bernardo Vallerino creates an immersive multi-media installation of a series of human scale objects that together resemble a gravesite inside a mortuary or memorial building with cathedral like architectural components. For the artist, the work speaks to the fact that time and history are witnesses to an unfortunate truth; the preciousness of life is a privileged enjoyed by those who hold power. The installation transforms a parking garage area of approximately 2000 sq.ft. into a mortuary temple or monument of sorts by using the architectural elements of the garage to replicate and embody the quiet heaviness of places like the Spanish Valley of the Fallen or the Scottish National WWII War Memorial. Lamentación is part of the artist’s The Butterfly Case series, which metaphorically ties the macabre reality of decorative insect taxidermy cases to the careless, and in many cases, inhumane treatment of minorities, migrants, and the poor.
