Discipline: Visual Art – sculpture

John von Bergen

Discipline: Visual Art – sculpture
Region: Los Angeles, CA
MacDowell Fellowships: 2001
More: www.jvonb.com
John von Bergen primarily works in sculpture, wall installation, and pencil drawing. His sculptural and installation projects involve a wide range of materials (including polymer-gypsum, polyurethane, steel, rubber, found objects), architectural elements, and three-dimensional techniques (mold-making, foam-coating, carving, construction). His work also involves an extensive range of scale; projects may be as small as 25 cm or as large as 14 meters in length (such as his 2010 installation Whip Lash). Von Bergen's work explores the difficulties associated with defining phenomenal experience. His drawings, objects, and site-specific installations are vehicles for developing absurd relationships between things and their environments, which inevitably invite uncanny, perturbed reactions. Von Bergen's sculptural language may be more akin to the props used for science-fiction film opposed to conventional sculpture, as familiar forms from the world are hidden inside the skin of a wall, torn apart, morphed into other forms, or re-fabricated through inorganic, foreign materials. All of his projects question the impossibility of an objective perception in this current world, and consider the "found object" as a playground for traumatic re-invention. 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 toward the invention of idiosyncratic worlds.

Studios

Heinz

John von Bergen worked in the Heinz studio.

The icehouse, built of fieldstone in 1914–1915, was a practical part of Marian MacDowell’s plan for a self-sufficient farm. Winter ice cut from a nearby pond was stored here for summer use on the property. Idle since 1940, it was a handsome but outdated farm building. In 1995, Mrs. Drue Heinz, a vice chairman…

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