Anton Kern Gallery
Skip to main content
  • Menu
  • Home
  • Artists
  • Exhibitions
  • WINDOW
  • Fairs
  • News
  • Store
  • Info
Cart
0 items $
Checkout

Item added to cart

View cart & checkout
Continue shopping
Menu

Margot Bergman

Past exhibition
March 9 - April 23, 2022
  • Overview
  • Installation Views
  • Works
  • Press
Overview
Margot Bergman Ginger Al, 2012 Acrylic on found canvas Image Dimensions: 17 3/4 x 14 inches (45.1 x 35.6 cm) Framed Dimensions: 19 1/4 x 15 1/4 x 1 5/8 inches 48.9 x 38.7 x 4.1 cm
Margot Bergman
Ginger Al, 2012
Acrylic on found canvas
Image Dimensions: 17 3/4 x 14 inches
(45.1 x 35.6 cm)
Framed Dimensions: 19 1/4 x 15 1/4 x 1 5/8 inches
48.9 x 38.7 x 4.1 cm

Anton Kern Gallery is pleased to present Margot Bergman’s third solo exhibition at the gallery, now bringing focus to the artist’s collaborative paintings created between the mid-1990s and 2010. During this pivotal period of her practice, Bergman appropriated paintings that she discovered in Chicago thrift shops, and overpainted the strangers’ works to create uncanny portraits. In hindsight, both the artist and viewer can recognize this series as an important bridge to her portraits of women, which have become the mainstay of her practice in recent years.

 

When encountering amateur paintings in a thrift shop, Bergman empathized with their creators; how they would have felt to see their work abandoned in a jumble and cheaply priced. After rescuing the works and enjoying their company for a time in her studio, the artist came to recognize that there was something contained in each one, waiting for her. A new creative impulse was unlocked. Where the former author’s work ended, Bergman’s began. 

 

As is evident across the eighteen small-scale collaborative works on view, Bergman’s level of intervention varies from canvas to canvas. In some cases she leaves the majority of the original work unaltered, while in others only a small area is still visible. Utilizing her exacting visual prowess, she repurposes representational objects within a landscape or still life, turning them into facial features. She deftly makes use of negative space too. Eyes emerge from flowers and a boat becomes a smile. Animals become humans, and humans gain an alter ego with a second face engulfing their own. 

 

In Ginger Al, for example, a rendered three quarter view of a woman’s face becomes the center of a double portrait, with Bergman’s thickly-applied fleshy paint surrounding it with an additional pair of eyes, bright red lips, and cascades of orange hair. In addition to overpainting faces, the artist would find herself repeatedly masking out the shape of a rabbit. In examples such as Peony and Chucky, the outline of a rabbit crouched on its hind legs creates a window into the underlying composition, a floral still life, and a scene of a mother and son at the park, curiously shifting the foreground and background. 

 

For over six decades, Bergman has operated as an independent force within the Chicago scene, working rigorously with limited feedback from the outside world. This insulation brought her focus to the interior, and enabled her to hone a sophisticated and peerless style. In the freedom of Bergman’s compositions, one can sense a spiritual affinity with the breakaway 20th Century European art movement COBRA, or Art Brut. Her works possess raw unadulterated vitality, and an embrace of pre-conscious or unconscious instinct. Bergman’s painting process, automatically finding faces where there are none, is strange even to herself. Seen together, these psychologically stirring paintings are an expression of the lifelong search to understand the actors within her own psyche that shapes her experience of the world. 

Download Press Release
Installation Views
  • Install 01 Scale
  • Install 02
  • Install 04 Scale
  • Install 06
  • Install 09
  • Install 11
  • Install 08
  • Install 14 Scale
Works
  • Margot Bergman Farmer's Daughter, n.d.
    Margot Bergman
    Farmer's Daughter, n.d.
  • Margot Bergman Daisy, 2003
    Margot Bergman
    Daisy, 2003
  • Margot Bergman Rosalee, n.d.
    Margot Bergman
    Rosalee, n.d.
  • Margot Bergman Yukon Goldie, n.d.
    Margot Bergman
    Yukon Goldie, n.d.
  • Margot Bergman Grace, 2001
    Margot Bergman
    Grace, 2001
  • Margot Bergman Ginger Al, 2012
    Margot Bergman
    Ginger Al, 2012
  • Margot Bergman Billy Joe, 2008
    Margot Bergman
    Billy Joe, 2008
  • Margot Bergman Green Goddess, 2007
    Margot Bergman
    Green Goddess, 2007
  • Margot Bergman Gena, 2001
    Margot Bergman
    Gena, 2001
  • Margot Bergman Elizabeth Jane Veronica McMillan, 2010
    Margot Bergman
    Elizabeth Jane Veronica McMillan, 2010
  • Margot Bergman Kitty, 2011
    Margot Bergman
    Kitty, 2011
  • Margot Bergman Peony, 2008
    Margot Bergman
    Peony, 2008
  • Margot Bergman Renee, 2005
    Margot Bergman
    Renee, 2005
  • Margot Bergman Chucky, 2009
    Margot Bergman
    Chucky, 2009
  • Margot Bergman Bait, 2002
    Margot Bergman
    Bait, 2002
  • Margot Bergman Juana, 2009
    Margot Bergman
    Juana, 2009
  • Margot Bergman Portia, 1998
    Margot Bergman
    Portia, 1998
  • Margot Bergman Judy Lynn, 2007
    Margot Bergman
    Judy Lynn, 2007
Press
  • Our Favorite Cultural Artifacts of 2022

    Millner, Maggie, The Yale Review, December 21, 2022

Related artist

  • Margot Bergman

    Margot Bergman

Back to exhibitions

ANTON KERN GALLERY

16 East 55th Street

New York, NY 10022

 

Hours:

Tuesday - Saturday: 10am - 6pm

 

 

 

 

T  212.367.9663

F  212.367.8135 

 

 

 

 

   

WINDOW, on view 24/7
91 Walker Street (corner of Walker and Lafayette Street)

General Inquiries:
info@antonkerngallery.com

 

Press Inquiries:
press@antonkerngallery.com

Go
Instagram, opens in a new tab.
Tiktok, opens in a new tab.
Join the mailing list
Manage cookies
Copyright © 2025 Anton Kern Gallery
Site by Artlogic

This website uses cookies
This site uses cookies to help make it more useful to you. Please contact us to find out more about our Cookie Policy.

Manage cookies
Accept

Cookie preferences

Check the boxes for the cookie categories you allow our site to use

Cookie options
Required for the website to function and cannot be disabled.
Improve your experience on the website by storing choices you make about how it should function.
Allow us to collect anonymous usage data in order to improve the experience on our website.
Allow us to identify our visitors so that we can offer personalised, targeted marketing.
Save preferences