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Emily Berger
Emily Berger_Red Ghost_2018_oil on wood_30x24 inches_Minimalism

2018

$3,800
£2,819.75
€3,284.62
CA$5,289.63
A$5,890.48
CHF 3,065.67
MX$72,628.88
NOK 39,043.63
SEK 36,697.22
DKK 24,507.34
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About the Item

Emily Berger’s paintings are based on a structure of repetitive and deliberate gesture that is intuitive but carefully considered. She brushes, wipes, rubs, and scrapes, incorporating the color, texture, and pattern of the wood supports, concealing and revealing underlying layers in various states of transparency and solidity. Working with, and against, whatever happens, she paints from edge to edge or exposes areas of the surface to create shapes. Chance is an essential element of her process; but setting the stage, Berger primes the wood in a clear primer so that even more texture will emerge as the brush stutters across the surface, creating vestigial verticals among the horizontals in unpredictable ways. The rhythm and variety of the bands of paint, the motion of painting, create broken symmetry and light, and a kind of veiled space. The sag or curvature in the structure of marks creates weight and a slight roundedness, evoking gravity and the body in the mix of organic and geometric form. At the intersection of gesture and structure, chance and control, openness and containment, Berger conducts each painting, fully engaged in the moment. Lately, Berger continues to break up the linearity of the horizontal bands with series of irregular marks, made by stopping and starting her hand and arm as she draws the brush across the surface in a kind of dance that alludes to sound. Each painting is like writing, or composing music. Within the structure improvisation is key. The horizontal bands create one kind of rhythmic movement while the marks create a syncopated pulse. The process of painting, incorporating the effects of chance, the materiality of paint and surface, evidence of the hand and body and the painter painting, are essential to her narrative. Revealed in the work are traces of revision, process and thought; the viewer can enter and share in the experience of painting, pay attention to nuance, slow down, move in and out and breathe. Emily Berger lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. A graduate of Brown University, she received an MFA in painting from Columbia University, attended the Skowhegan School in Maine and has been awarded several art residency fellowships. Her work has been reviewed often and is included in many private, corporate and public collections. Berger has been exhibited widely, including in exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art in Bogota, Colombia, The Herbert F. Johnson Museum at Cornell Universtiy, and the National Academy Museum in New York City, which awarded her the John Hultberg Memorial Prize for Painting. Recent group exhibitions include Continuity to Change: Recent History of American Abstraction at Tower Fine Arts Gallery, The College of Brockport, SUNY, New York, and the traveling exhibition, Blurring Boundaries: The Women of American Abstract Artists, 1936-Present, Murray State University, Kentucky, and University of Tennessee, Knoxville. She is included in the American Abstract Artists 75th Anniversary Print Portfolio, an exhibition currently traveling to university galleries around the country. Recent solo exhibitions in New York City include Rhythm and Light at Walter Wickiser Gallery, New Paintings at Norte Maar gallery, and Marking Time at Scholes Street Studio.
  • Creator:
    Emily Berger (1953, American)
  • Creation Year:
    2018
  • Dimensions:
    Height: 30 in (76.2 cm)Width: 24 in (60.96 cm)
  • Medium:
  • Movement & Style:
  • Period:
  • Condition:
  • Gallery Location:
    Darien, CT
  • Reference Number:
    1stDibs: LU17224263012

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