Guillermo Bert's Bar Code Series

Revolution is on Guillermo Bert's mind. It's been there since he left Pinochet terrorized Chile years ago. He now lives in Los Angeles where he has been creating his provocative and politically charged art for two decades. Bert has a wide body of work, including his frequent use of Mao imagery, but his Bar Code / Branding America Series dominates his current collection.

Bert defines the series as a reflection of the current political climate and says the work is "his perspective on the consumerism that permeates the core of American society." The mixed media works are mostly on wood or plastic surfaces. Bert employs industrial and digital techniques to burn images onto the surfaces and then applies a layer of 24 ct. gold leaf or glossy candy enamel paints in red, white and blue. He chose his enamel colors and gold leaf for specific reasons. The glossy colors reference American nationalism and the gold-leaf references religiosity and the sacred.

At the heart of each piece is the bar code or the QR code. Bert takes the symbol and mixes it with social ideals, pop culture, or politics through statements or the image itself. One work is simply a bar code with the word Democracy at the bottom. It's a brilliant justapositioning of consumerism with political ideals.

Another piece depicts the Statue of Liberty dripping with a bar code and the words"Statue of Limitations" at the bottom.

His clever use of the mundane - bar codes and QR codes - reminds me a bit of Andy Warhol's use of the Campbell's soup can, but Guillermo's pieces are more message-driven.

Bert not only draws upon North American culture in his work, but also South American culture. His piece, "Blue Poem," a blue image of a QR code, is a mixed media work on wood with powder pigment and iridescent acrylic that is based on a poem by Mapuche writer Graciela Huinao. The Mapuche are the largest indigenous group in Chile today. Huinao was the first female Mapuche writer to publish work in Chile and become an internationally recognized poet.

A title placard next to the piece contains an actual QR code and pulls up Huinao's poem Psalmo 1492. It begins, "Though we were never the chosen people, they kill us in the sign of the cross..."

Bert is an astute observer of modern civilization and our global environment of 24/7 information exchange. He says he was drawn to the universal Bar Code because of its "branding of information as a standardized mechanism used to define certain products."
There's an elegance to Bert's work. The images are thought-provoking and striking yet it's not heavy handed.
Bert is happy to talk about his artistic process with visitors to his gallery at The Brewery downtown Los Angeles.