Bert Bergen

The Time Of Cruel Miracles

October 2014

With Live Performance by Abyss of Fathomless Light

Taking its name from a passage in the Arkady and Boris Strugatsky novel Roadside Picnic, Bert Bergen uses embroidered gouache collages, sculptural cave forms and a sonic ritual that all serve as vignettes to an unknown mythology.

A duality of reverence and disgust for the visceral images of Sunday sports page heroes are at the core of embroidered gouache collages. Manipulation of athletes enraptured in the throes of physical craft exaggerates the god-like aspects of professional sports, moves away from banal associations and towards a reality that is both horrific and humorous.

Using Lascaux and Montespan as models for the cave functioning as a prehistoric temple of spiritual violence and animal sacrifice, a cavern-like environment of sculptural work serves as a backdrop to a sonic ritual involving the impalement of coveted and loved animal/human entities. Sacrifice is used as a transgressive act to commune with a cosmological otherness through the vertigo of death.

View Bert Bergen on Dose Projects

Exhibition Photography by Sasha Charoensub and Bert Bergen