amarie bergman

Perfect Lie, exhibition/intervention at Factory 49 Paris, Amarie Bergman, front view, black suspended fabrication 170cm wide and white laser-cut circle 90cm diameter 2021; image by Amarie Bergman and Jacek Przybyszewski

Perfect Lie at Factory 49 Paris has the idiosyncratic mix which I’ve been exploring for a number of years. In this instance, I set extreme limits with two separate objects: an opaque white 2D laser-cut circle, sited on the surface of the front window, and a 3D black oval, suspended within the gallery.

“... what do all the objects in the world have in common if not the fact of being - and of being nothing but - the provisional permanence of certain changes.”

For the catalogue, including the above quote by Jacques Rombaud, glide over to this link.

AND for the video (generously filmed by Cheng Feng Kevin Yu), click here.
 

Utmost appreciation to Jacek Przybyszewski for his ingenuity and for making this project possible. A special thank you to Jan Przybyszewski for his French translation of the catalogue text. And, much gratitude, as always, to Pamela Aitken, director of Factory 49 – Paris + Sydney.

Factory 49 Paris

10 bis rue de Chaligny, 75012 FR

31 December 2020 - 10 January 2021

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Portuguese National Pavilion, Lisbon, architect: Alvaro Siza Vieira, image credit: Giovanni Nardi

I can barely wait to experience Architecture of Infinity, a new film by Christoph Schaub. Meanwhile and voila, the synopsis:

"Temporality and age are inherent in every object and creature and, depending on one’s outlook, may transcend to infinity. How can this be imagined? What goes beyond it? The filmmaker Christoph Schaub starts his personal journey through time and space in his childhood, when his fascination with sacred buildings began – and his wonder at beginnings and ends. Schaub explores, together with the architects Peter Zumthor, Peter Märkli and Álvaro Siza Vieira, the artists James Turrell and Cristina Iglesias and drummer virtuoso Jojo Mayer, the magic of sacred spaces..."

And a link to the trailer:
https://architekturderunendlichkeit.ch/en/

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The Perfect Lie #4 / PL004, Amarie Bergman: graphic image; 2007

I came across two synchrolettes this week: an image of a 2020 reductive painting - Travel with Me - by Louise Blyton and a blog post - The Perfect Lie - from the archive of Fonil (a site initiated by Yuri Doric back in 2008 / Vancouver in which Michael Shandrick and I managed, between us, to publish something pretty much every day for several weeks about art, design and architecture.) Anyway, I will leave it to you to check the affinity between LB's painting and a transcription of the post by MS that featured the above design from The Perfect Lie series:

Amarie ... professes little interest in the game of golf, yet she has some profound insights about it. On our walks past a nearby course, she usually listens to me rave on about the game then goes off to work in her studio, producing a graphic design that expresses golf in its most minimal form.

One of the things we’ve talked about is the placement of a shot so near to the hole that it creates a sense of anticipation. Perhaps the golfer has chipped to the green and the ball rolls to the cup and stops just short. The golfer nudges the ball in for a birdie, par or bogey -- each level creating a different level of anxiety, frustration, excitement and euphoria. “I can see a golfer pausing for a second or two reflecting on their playing prowess,” says Amarie. “He visualizes the ball disappearing and probably the acclaim from his fellow players. Indeed, the sheer perfection of the ball’s poise is revelling Zen." She quotes a passage by Gaston Bachelard from The Poetics of Space: “… images of full roundness help us to collect ourselves.” This describes, she says, a moment in metaphor when a white sphere, like a golf ball, is associated with a brilliant idea anointed with a pristine quality.

Somehow the seeming inevitability about the ball’s placement and the hole is worthy of a moment of reflection. Why? “Because alongside the idea is the black, seemingly flat, pure void of unfilled potential. And, Amarie adds via Philippe Diolét, “By changing space, by leaving the space of one’s usual sensibilities, one enters into communication with a space that is psychically innovating.” MS

http://fonilinfo.blogspot.com/search/label/golf%20art

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My next space for laredo 002, an intervention, will be the abandoned 1930s Back Beach Salt Baths. The site may be remembered as "a great folly" by long-term residents of the regional town of Bunbury / Geographe Bay on the Indian Ocean, but - as a newcomer to the area - I revel in its possibilities as a magical archeological site.

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Half Sun, Richard Long: red tezontle stone from Coatepec, Estado de México and sited at Luis Barragán’s iconic modernist landmark, Cuadra San Cristóbal; 9 x 4.5 x 0.3m 2020; image by Sebastiano Pellion di Persano

Richard Long continues to surprise, translating concepts with Earth materials into tangible interventions. His art seems familiar, as if we’ve always known it at a liminal level, so when we experience his work – even via video or image –  a kind of re-cognition takes place, which is simultaneously calming and elating.

Richard Long at Luis Barragán’s Cuadra San Cristóbal in México City: 2020

Richard Long From a Rolling Stone to Now at Lisson Gallery NY: 6 March - 3 July 2020
 

ps Hervé Perdriolle, art critic and exhibition commissioner, has just released a book on Long’s land art in Maharastra from 2003: Richard Long - India: work in progress, photos by Hervé Perdriolle. 

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Thin Air, my new design company, materialised! Probably its first breath happened the moment I noticed the possibilities of Das T-Shirt Automat – a super-mod ‘take-away’ print shop – in Prahran, a much-frequented inner-city locus when I lived in Melbourne. Fast forward >> happily, Sue Croke at Das accepted a suite from my portfolio this month;  translating / co-creating it into wearable / portable art.

Thin Air is not my first business; there’s quite an interval from a past one: Mirthwerks (Vancouver, Canada). Between 2006-2008 as co-founder and principal designer, I generated advertising / marketing concepts along with seasonal collections of graphic designs, printed on paper greeting cards in short runs by Infigo Imaging, which retailed at Chapters / Indigo and the Vancouver Art Gallery’s store.

Since 2009, my focus has included writing reviews for Whitehot Magazine of Contemporary Art but, above all, conceiving / presenting reductive, dimensionally real objects as interventions / exhibitions in galleries. My art practice will continue while Thin Air promises to be a phase identified through its strategic placement with merchandisers and (she said modestly) by the constant clarity of minimalism.

https://thinair.dasautomat.com/
https://www.instagram.com/thin.air.01/

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Constellation #14, Amarie Bergman: mixed media on cotton canvas; 32.5 x 114cm 2000

A few years after moving to Sydney, I made an enigmatic series of work in 2000 on the backs of some old paintings. Not just any old paintings! No, these were ones whose colourful abstract fronts had once been confidently shown on the walls of Vancouver’s commercial galleries, touched by white gloves, lit up by halogens.

The new paintings looked different: white and black, inner+outer space-y, especially #14. Like Cinderella at the stroke of midnight, the Constellation series carried a metaphorical glass slipper. It became a turning point where geometry was favoured and when strict colour limitation led to a thought-driven / less spontaneous, yet oddly enough, more intuitive practice. The spell was cast.

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Inês Brito and Gilberto Rodriguez, Texas  

On this Good Friday 2020, let me present a twofold gift from Inês Brito and Gilberto Rodriguez - Brito.Rodriguez - who relay their last, and most poignant, subtle gesture to us in the form of a photograph and a poem.

KEEPING QUIET
Pablo Neruda

Now We Will Count To Twelve
And We Will All Keep Still.

For Once On The Face Of The Earth,
Let’s Not Speak In Any Language;
Let’s Stop For One Second,
And Not Move Our Arms So Much.

It Would Be An Exotic Moment
Without Rush, Without Engines;
We Would All Be Together
In A Sudden Strangeness.

Fisherman In The Cold Sea
Would Not Harm Whales
And The Man Gathering Salt
Would Look At His Hurt Hands.

Those Who Prepare Green Wars,
Wars With Gas, Wars With Fire,
Victories With No Survivors,
Would Put On Clean Clothes
And Walk About With Their Brothers
In The Shade, Doing Nothing.

What I Want Should Not Be Confused
With Total Inactivity.
Life Is What It Is About;
I Want No Truck With Death.

If We Were Not So Single-Minded
About Keeping Our Lives Moving,
And For Once Could Do Nothing,
Perhaps A Huge Silence
Might Interrupt This Sadness
Of Never Understanding Ourselves
And Of Threatening Ourselves With Death.
Perhaps The Earth Can Teach Us
As When Everything Seems Dead
And Later Proves To Be Alive.

Now I’ll Count Up To Twelve
And You Keep Quiet And I Will Go.

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