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Anders Bergman
November, 2013
This selection of mixed media abstracts by Swedish artist Anders Bergman is from a larger painting and installation series created for a show at Helsinki’s Sinne Gallery earlier in 2013. In these works, Bergman employs materials found at building sites, such as sheet rock and construction wood; materials familiar to him through his extensive experience as a skilled construction worker.
Bergman’s art can partly be seen as an exploration of processes of organic transformation. Through his observations and discoveries he asserts connections – “common laws” – between environments as seemingly disparate as (for example) everyday building renovation sites and the vast lava covered landscapes of the Icelandic wilderness.
By placing his focus on these organic, ever-evolving processes (both large and small) of our universe, Bergman encourages his audience to join him on a subtle yet potentially profound journey of linking and fresh thinking. For example, his exhortation to “free your ass” (a twist on the classic Parliament-Funkadelic anthem) is partly a reference to the fact that Sinne Gallery was formerly home to a Helsinki sex shop.
About this shift from porn store to high-end art gallery (and his work more generally) Bergman writes:
“I found the extreme shift – the transformation – in the mode of cultural expression very interesting. I am often drawn to places of observable transformation – to those “in-between landscapes” and the opportunities they offer.”