Artist Talk: March 2, 11am
Kelly Berg’s art practice is essentially entwined with her passion for tectonics; caves, geysers, fault lines and volcanoes, and the cultural histories and mythologies associated with them. The title of her current exhibition, A Crack in Everything, (from a Leonard Cohen song), encapsulates the source of her explorations; active fissures of an ever-evolving Earth, places of both “destruction and rebirth where one can truly experience the sublime.” This exhibition focuses on an ongoing series of paintings she calls Rifts. The origin of this series is traced to her first visit to Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park where she traversed the Kilauea Iki Crater. Her Rift paintings on natural wood surfaces follow the fluid shapes and lines of the wood grain, drawing parallels between these organic patterns and ocean waves, layers of sediment and lava flows. During the pandemic, Berg began to introduce pyramids and obelisks into these paintings. As she states, “the pyramid form in ancient Egypt represents the primordial mound that rose out of the abyss, the moment of our world’s creation.” Within the language of her work, the pyramid and volcano have become interchangeable, representing the dynamics and physical power of natural forces and the creation myths built upon them.