Word: bergsteinã
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...years, is currently on display. His paintings are intricate and dreamlike, capturing imaginary worlds simultaneously being constructed and destroyed. Often, there stands a small, balding man painted in a corner, a self-referential portrait of the artist trying to figure out what he has made and thereby saving Bergstein??s paintings from pure abstraction and lending them an unnerving physicality.On the next block over, between Burberry on one corner and Brooks Brothers on the other, is Barbara Krakow Gallery (10 Newbury). Saturday afternoon is home to peak business; true to form, the gallery was buzzing when I went...
...Bergstein??s oil paintings dominate the exhibit, divided into two major thematic thrusts, both of which explore the notion and expand the definition of a self-portrait. One is a series of monochromatic studies that draw heavily on Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s “The Tower of Babel” paintings. In Bergstein??s “Mount II,” a decaying round structure emerges out of a charred and flat landscape. Fractured rising levels are energized by thin lines that betray the motion of a building buffeted by wind...
...covering an illustration of himself with a collage of images meaningful to him. As we would expect from a man who is on the faculty of Boston’s School of the Museum of Fine Arts, his visual vocabulary is verbose and wide. In his own words, Bergstein??s latest work includes “eveything from cubism to modernism. The inside of me is related to art history, humanist sensibilities from Piranesi to [The Simpson’s] Homer, from conceptual art to Da Vinci...
...from a smouldering cigar; he exposes organic components of heart, bone and vascular tissue in boxed-off frames. The work juxtaposes Homer Simpson with a Renaissance pencil portrait and a photograph of Sigmund Freud with a cartoon of a non-Disneyfied Pinnochio figure. The sheer volume of Bergstein??s icons requires considerable time to parse through his allusions, but close scrutiny rewards the viewer with finely attuned detail...
While Johnson’s collages are far more dense and not nearly as easily decipherable as Bergstein??s lucid imagery, his prints are oddly engrossing for their experimentation with mixed elements. Pencil crayons applied to the Mylar surface produce a visible texture identical to pastels and the medium only lends itself to a finite number of revisions. Ink lines must be removed with rubbing alcohol, which degrades the surface, so Johnson’s pieces must be planned out ahead of time. There is a comforting symmetry to much of the work, and subtle humor throughout?...
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