Dreamscapes: An Exhibit of Ard Berge's Work at Iona College

The exhibition DREAMSCAPES: New Works by Ard Berge is featured at the Brother Kenneth Chapman Gallery in the Iona College Arts Center opening on January 24th. The exhibition includes a series of twenty-six paintings and eight drawings through which Ard Berge imaginatively explores the American experience from global and historical perspectives.

Berge, a skilled portraitist, playfully and sardonically populates his canvases with a great American bison, an African peddler on the moon, a fairground on a desolate landscape, an Apache hero engulfed in the stars and stripes, and the White House on a camouflaged lawn. His pictorial realism is not literal but rather represents the whimsical visual reflections of one American’s responses to the world’s paradoxes. Some of these take the form of unexpected and ironical juxtapositions of subjects within the frame of a single canvas while others unfold in diptychs and triptychs. A striking quality of this body of work is the incongruity between the breadth of its subject matter and the exacting precision with which paint is applied to canvas to render these fantastical leaps of the mind in minute detail.

Ard Berge’s last show was at Art First Contemporary Art gallery in London. He has taught studio art and art history for the past ten years at Felician College in New Jersey.

The artist will hold a gallery tour on January 28th at noon. The show will close with a reception on February 25th from noon to 3:00 pm.

Gallery Hours:
Monday-Thursday: noon-5:00 pm
Thursday Evening: 6:30 – 8:00 pm
Sunday: 2:00 – 5:00 pm

Location:
Brother Kenneth Chapman Gallery
Iona College Arts Center
665 North Avenue
New Rochelle, NY 10801
(914) 637-7796
www.iona.edu/artscouncil
Gallery Director: Madalyn Barbero Jordan