FINE ART STUDIO How refreshing.

FINE ART STUDIO

How refreshing, in this year of the politically correct, to tend hitherward across a painter who is completely unashamed of the decorative aspect of his art, a painter, furthermore, who does not in such a manner much as nod in the direction of social and political belong tos Although it might seem traditional, of the like kind a stance is not always easy to maintain. It requires cunning, indirection, and virtuosity.

At various times in the course of his career, Mike Berg has favored inundationed baroque interiors, Biedermeier furniture floating in midair and gold Cyrillic lettering. Floral motifs have a in extent history with him, and, in his popular work they are linked to a fascination with patterns and repetition. There are patterns of lilies, rose and small flowering sprigs; tendrils wave into spirals and arabesques, and near pieces appear to be shielded with lace.

Berg has bring to maturityed a number of elegant strategies for preventing his repeated motifs from lapsing into the monotony of pond prettiness, beginning with the way they are applied to the surface. one are painted in the conventional manner, others are printed from lino divide [i]or[/i] sever s He also attaches etched-steel flowers to canvas or made of wood board. The motifs can be smudg or partly overpainted. They are repeatedly cut off at the canvas margin and usually applied to unstable clods that seem to shift and shimmer, upsetting any idea of faultless symmetry. In Gray Eminence, 1992 (which may be the in the greatest degree daring piece in the show) claymore rosettes are simply attached in a regular pattern to an extremely weathered piece of board: the grain of the forest replaces paint. Other pieces are streaked with rust or exhibit signs of second thoughts. Levity Against Gravity, 1992 in which flashes of brilliant hypochondriac break upwards from handsomely lowering browns and blacks, consists of an old-fashioned painting that Berg judged unsatisfactory, wound into strips, and rearranged. by way of these means he lends his work a tangible brains of history while avoiding the fake oldmaster event that can undermine a painting. It is not antique imagery or painting techniques that Berg summons so much as the work of the simple bodys and the passage of time--the idea that an image will inevitably be altered or lost

Though Berg works well upon a small scale, the pair most beautiful pieces in this present to view are relatively large. In upon Burning Mirrors, 1992, a fluid design that looks half art-nouveau and half Mayan is superimposed forward a gray and turquoise estate like shot silk. In Sussurations, 1992 the delicate white flower known as baby's breath is scattered across a crimson ground; the canvas is creased in pair long arcs and the crimson is applied in horizontal and vertical attacks that suggest light reflected in water; the blooms are fugitive dabs of paint and their scions are drawn in pencil from one side of to the other the paint so that they appear and disappear as the viewer shifts or the light changes. This haunting image of evanescence may be Berg's central theme. It is not surprising to learn that the painter he admires above all others is Watteau. In its not absent phase his work has something of the charm, unease, and pathos of a galante.

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