WATCH “MIKE BERG CHENEY” a new video (2:08)

WATCH DEC 2023 VIDEO INTERVIEW WITH MIKE BERG on ‘We Belong’ sculptural installation at Istanbul 74 (3:45)

“It is always a special occasion when I return to Istanbul. I am particularly attached to the particular light of the city, to the architecture, to the works of Arshiel Gorky and to the amazing color palette found in Anatolia. There is nowhere else on earth that I know with such a passionate connection to traditional art and craft. It influences my work in every way.” - Mike Berg

OPEN THROUGH JAN 6

Mike Berg’s exploration of Anatolia-inspired color in collectible monotypes on handmade paper, on view at ADAS Gallery. Please take a look at Book Without Words, a collectible limited printing artist edition.

BHARAT GATE BY MIKE BERG

Mike Berg is proposing a new monumental arch as a companion to the existing India Gate in New Delhi.

Berg usually makes drawings, paintings on canvas, wood and metal sculptures and installation art. This proposed 45m high sandstone and marble portal is a departure in scale and heroic dimensions, standing 3m higher than the existing arch. The Arc de Triomphe in Paris is slightly taller, at 50m high.

“I’m not advocating that they demolish, dismantle, relocate or reassemble the existing India Gate,” Berg says, “But it’s a war memorial from 1921 built by Luytens to honor soldiers who died for the Empire in WWI. India gained independence in 1948 and has moved on from the colonial era. India’s a space age country with a technological future. So the moment may be right for a new modernist monument. It’s an historic moment for India,” the artist says. “They’ve successfully landed a robot on the moon, will soon become the world’s most populous nation, and India is recognized as a titan of world entertainment.”

Mike Berg has specified that only Indian sandstone and marble be used in the cladding. The existing India Gate is rendered in the Beaux Arts style in pink sandstone, and is more reminiscent of 19th century monuments such as India’s Parliament House, which is adjacent, and dates from the same era of construction.

“It’s the perfect moment to reconsider a remnant of the colonial past,” Mike Berg says. “The Bharat Gate design definitely announces that India has arrived in the twenty-first century.”

“Berg is a kind of aesthetic anarchist, disrupting the natural processes of decay and organizing his interventions into exquisitely layered abstraction.” – Linda Yablonsky

View 8 short videos from 2022 here:

VIEW VIDEO FROM GALERI NEV - ISTANBUL - WATCH NOW

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otYB3-bZ8sk

SEE VIDEO FROM MIKE BERG New Kilims from Uşak at Knotisse (3:59)