Mene,Mene, Tekel, Upharsin

Mene,Mene, Tekel, Upharsin (The Writing on the Wall)
Recent Paintings by Andrew Berg, Feb. 19 – April 15, 2012 at MACC’s Singer Gallery

The Singer Gallery, 350 South Dahlia Street in Denver will host a reception for Andrew Berg at the Mizel Arts and Culture Center’s Singer Gallery on February 19th from 3 to 6 p.m.

Over the last few years Berg, who resides in Golden, Colorado, has achieved wide-spread recognition, both in the art community as well as among astute collectors, for his sumptuous and haunting abstract paintings. Berg’s paintings are informed by a remarkable range of art-historical influences. One can easily discern in them a debt to abstract expressionism, color-field painting, surrealist automatism, as well as to the raw, brutish intensity of artists such as Jean-Michel Basquiat. While he has clearly absorbed the last 60 years of American art, Berg’s paintings are fresh and revelatory, remarkable in their capacity to express the inexpressible and to reconcile the opposing qualities of action and contemplation, raucous cacophony and deep silence.

Apart from their allusions to art-historical movements and figures, Berg’s paintings are animated by the artist’s immersion in the archetypal depth psychology of Carl Jung. Art critic Stephanie Grilli astutely observes “Surrendering to the creative process, Berg taps into what Carl Jung described as ‘the play instinct acting from inner necessity.’ “ His Jungian studies and practice led Berg to a variety of spiritual and esoteric traditions. Kabbalistic mysticism, medieval hermeticism, and classical mythologies are evident in the paintings’ mysterious capacity to speak directly, immediately and joyfully to our own quest for “wholeness” and a life authentically lived. Describing his art practice Berg states “I paint to discover the meaning and purpose of my life.” Berg paintings are suffused with what Jungian psychology has described as the anomalous figures of the “demon” and the “angel.” They are imagination’s liberating agents who embody an irrational splendor, unleashing their primal forces into works of art.

The exhibition’s title is taken from one of the paintings in the exhibition which in turn derives from the biblical story of Daniel – specifically Daniel 1-28). “Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin” were words written by a mysterious hand which appeared on the wall of King Belshazzar’s palace during a sumptuous banquet in which the King and his guests were drinking wine from the golden vessels they had ransacked from the Temple in Jerusalem. Unable to decipher the inscription, the King sent for Daniel. Daniel explained that the king had been “weighed” and found wanting by God and that as a result his Kingdom would be conquered and divided among the Medes and the Persian. The portentous phrase “The writing on the wall” has come to mean that an ominous and violently rupturing event is inevitable.

Andrew Berg is represented by Michele Mosko Fine Art.