John von Bergen is an American visual artist. His work has been exhibited and collected widely in Europe, South America and in The United States.

Personal background

While he was raised in Greenwich, Connecticut, von Bergen moved to New York City at the age of 19. He attended the School of Visual Arts, earning his

Bachelor of Fine Arts A Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) is a standard undergraduate degree for students for pursuing a professional education in the visual, fine or performing arts. It is also called Bachelor of Visual Arts (BVA) in some cases. Background The Bachelor ...

degree with Honors in 1996.

Fine art background

In both John von Bergen's drawings and sculptural work is a recognizable interest in exploring, where the utilization of unusual materials blend in flowing transition from the apparent towards the invention of idiosyncratic worlds. As writer

Jonathan Lethem Jonathan Allen Lethem (; born February 19, 1964) is an American novelist, essayist, and short story writer. His first novel, ''Gun, with Occasional Music'', a genre work that mixed elements of science fiction and detective fiction, was publishe ...

has noted about von Bergen's sculptural work: "... they seem to create a problem of interpreting process. At a glance there’s the suggestion of an event or a moment, but whether that would be a destructive, or a creative, or a conflictual moment, is actually a moment… the apprehension of what’s in front of you. You realize that you’re looking at something that appears to have grown, or shifted, or has been delicately restored, and that there is actually no 'Earth Moment'. There is only a kind of description of struggle between creative, destructive, and reconstructive processes, and that you’re always looking at several of these things at once. You can’t make a back formation out of it, or any narrative out of it. You can’t say: ‘Well, this depicts this interruption or this conflict.’ In fact, it’s always a little stranger than that… or a lot stranger than that.”

Exhibitions, awards and activities

Von Bergen's work has been shown at the

Kunstmuseum Stuttgart The Kunstmuseum Stuttgart is a contemporary and modern art museum in Stuttgart, Germany, built and opened in 2005. Description The cubic museum building with 5000 m2 of display space was designed by Berlin architects Hascher and Jehle. During ...

, the Pera Museum in Istanbul, Smack Mellon in Brooklyn, New York, Kjubh Kunstverein in Cologne, Wilhelm-Hack-Museum in

Ludwigshafen Ludwigshafen, officially Ludwigshafen am Rhein (; meaning " Ludwig's Port upon Rhine"), is a city in the German state of Rhineland-Palatinate, on the river Rhine, opposite Mannheim. With Mannheim, Heidelberg, and the surrounding region, it form ...

, Halle 14 in Leipzig, Autocenter in Berlin, and the former Galerie Schmela in Düsseldorf. In 2009 he received a Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant. In January 2014, von Bergen presented the exhibition "Prey Voidant" at the Alexander Levy Gallery in Berlin. The exhibition coincided with the release of his first monograph titled "CORE", published by Kerber Verlag and distributed by d.a.p. Von Bergen served as Director of Studio Arts for Bard College Berlin from 2017 - 2022. He is currently involved in implementing a permanent installation commissioned by Bundesamt für Bauwesen und Raumordnung for a new extension of The Bundestag in Berlin. He is a 2020 recipient of a Recherchestipendium Bildende Kunst (Senatsverwaltung für Kultur, Berlin), and a 2022 Kunstfonds Grant recipient (Bonn, Germany). In 2024 von Bergen will be a guest at the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation Residency in Bethany, CT.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:von Bergen, John Living people Artists from Connecticut American artists Year of birth missing (living people)