amarie bergman

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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Salon de los Abencerrajes, Alhambra, Granada: Vaughan Williams https://www.flickr.com/photos/85218154@N00/261759547

Be enticed to read one of these three random choices from Paola Ricci's web-log Taste Archeologist:

Spain / Poetry of Different Styles
"Large natural spaces, or palaces of Spanish places and cities, are induced to be envelopes of something that expands or reflections of something else that is not immediately possible to grasp as real and concrete..."

The Space Revealed I.1

"Traveling, a "discipline" is accomplished, which is called moving the body from one place to another without knowing what you will see and how you will observe it..."

The Mirrored Architecture / Jean Nouvel - Zaha Hadid
"...They are anthropomorphic or cocoon forms that generate life in front of the perforated and luminescent wall of Nouvel's..."

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no.1 (detail), Amarie Bergman: found painted board 78 x 40 x .5cm; laredo 001 Melbourne 2019

Out of the blue, Dallas Jeffs, editor at Artist Run Website, has just published a micro-review about my latest work.
GEOMETRIC FORMS + EQUATIONS:

https://www.artistrunwebsite.com/blog/3257/Geometric+Forms+and+Equations%3A+Art+by+Amarie+Bergman

Dallas has not only highlighted and promoted my work but also a myriad of genres presented by other ARW artists. I confess that I really admire her writing style because of its adept distillation of the macro along with superb editing; and she always includes a well-curated choice of images. Dallas has written two of these concentrated reviews before on my practice. (see below) Triple gratitude from me to her!

SCIENTIFIC CONCEPTS + AESTHETICS
2016

https://www.artistrunwebsite.com/blog/2335/Scientific+Concepts+and+Aesthetics%3A+Art+by+Amarie+Bergman

Violet Pink Eternity, Amarie Bergman: Nepalese hand-felted wool, acrylic paint; three spheres, each 2.5cm; Aqua Vovo, Factory 49 Pop Up, Paris 2016

SIMPLIFIED SYMBOLS

2014

https://www.artistrunwebsite.com/blog/1459/Simplified+Symbols%3A+Art+by+Amarie+Bergman

Maquillage #2, Amarie Bergman: pastel on canvas; 25 x 25cm 2014

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Interior view of studio, 2020 image by Amarie Bergman

A change is as good as a rest, so they say. Actually, better! Although my new studio in Bunbury - aka Bunta del Oeste / Sunset Beach on the coast in Western Australia - is just 8 square metres, about the same size as the recent one in Melbourne, it’s different: very quiet - capital Q! - and features a ceramic tile floor and plenty of natural light. Work for projects is again underway: either being contemplated in the classic ideating mode or spontaneously appearing out of thin air.

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13 May 2012 self-portrait, outside ParisCONCRET looking in at The Rosy Crucifixion exhibition

Quelle surprise: I'm now on Instagram! It seemed like an aeon of deciding whether to add another 'So-Me' account into the mix but so far there's a feeling of instant rapport and excitement. First 2 images are from Neo Violet at Five Walls Projects / Melbourne ~ one of my favourite solo exhibitions.
@amarie.bergman

https://www.instagram.com/amarie.bergman/

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(left - found board, partial view) no.1, (above, in cabinet - found paper rolls, partial view) no.3 and (right - found balsa hoop) no.2; laredo 001, Melbourne 2019

For laredo’s very first project I presented my work for a dazzling 24 hours (!) on 3-4 October 2019.

images: https://www.amariebergman.com/gallery/images-laredo-001

text: https://www.amariebergman.com/pages/intervention-statement-laredo-001

video: (a virtual vernissage/finissage)

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