Unknown Horizon

Craig Krull Gallery is pleased to announce representation of Kelly Berg, and our first exhibition of her paintings, "Unknown Horizon." Working like the Roman god, Vulcan, forging calderas and caverns with deep, rock-like chasms of paint, Berg's illusionistic space offers no horizon, only an ever-changing, tumultuous world where time and space are uncertain. While this chaos is emblematic of our anxious age, Berg also includes pyramids as symbols of transcendence, providing an ancient human context within this shifting natural tangle of lightening and lava. She is stimulated by the sublime, wrangling with the conflicting emotions of fear and attraction, of terror and awe. Her lifelong obsession with extreme weather and geology began with childhood winters in Minnesota and visits to National Parks. In recent years, she has been inspired by trips to the Meramec Caverns in Missouri and the Kilauea Caldera in Hawai'i. She employs acrylic, metal mesh, plaster, inks, scratchboard and other mixed media in a process she equates with geological layering and excavations, representing the fleeting moments of intense energy, the slow growth of stalactites, and the scratching away of time.