Gerry Bergstein: Body Politic

On View: January 31 - February 29, 2020
Reception: Friday, January 31, 6 – 8pm
Walk-through with the Artist and John R. Stomberg, Virginia Rice Kelsey 1961s Director, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College: Saturday, February 8, 1pm

“My new work continues a decades long fascination with the paradoxes of the high and the low, the manic and the melancholic, the hilarious and the horrific- this list could go on and on. Ever present references to issues of mortality in art and life have become more personal as I get older. In a way these works are landscapes of my own body and mind. The work “Body Politic” in particular is inspired by a landscape by Philip Guston, which can also be seen as a body with insects crawling on it--probably a self portrait. To paraphrase Guston, I’m not so interested in “making it new” but in “making it old” by discovering something that was always a part of me but which I am seeing in a new way. For me art is about artists freely investigating and sharing the lenses through which we see the world. ” - Gerry Bergstein

Whitewash

2019, mixed media on canvas, 34×64”

Climb

2019, mixed media on paper, 28×19”

You Hadda Be There

2019, mixed media on canvas, 44×60”

I'm Painting as Fast as I Can

2019, mixed media on paper, 16×12.5”
SOLD

Sweep

2019. mixed media on canvas, 40x32”

Theory and Practice

2019, mixed media on paper, 22×30”
SOLD

Body Politic

2019, mixed media on canvas, 66×84”

Watchtower

2018, oil on paper, 22×30”
SOLD

The Edge

2019, mixed media on paper, 5×7.5”
SOLD

Spelunker

2019, mixed media on paper, 21×15”

Whirl

2019, mixed media on paper, 30×22”
SOLD

Orb

2019, oil on paper, 22×18.5”
SOLD

Action Painter

2019, mixed media on paper, 8×8”
SOLD

Form vs. Content - A Cage Match

2019, mixed media, 3×2×4”
SOLD

I Love Painting

2019, mixed media, 4×2×4”
SOLD

The Gleaners

2019, mixed media, 7×8×10”

Gerry Bergstein

Gerry Bergstein has been widely considered one of the most influential painters in this region since the 1980s. Still, Bergstein’s penchant for producing eruptions of unexpected imagery is undiminished. His work teems with cascading figures plucked from art history and his own life. It’s a centuries-spanning reunion of Bergstein’s very extended family of relatives, friends, and figures he’s borrowed from the work of Jean-Leon Gerome, Rene Magritte, Max Beckmann, Vija Celmins, John Currin, Matt Groening and many, many others.