utopian DISTOPIA
This site does not debate political issues –except those that surround food. But let’s speak generally. The current political circus in the U.S. and abroad seems unreal to me. I read quotes & sound bites everyday that indicate paint pervasively dark image of humanity. Today’s AAAD Artist of the Day, Don Bergland stages glimpses of the surreal world –both utopian & dystopian– only previously imagined. If feel like the perfect fit today. (continues below)
“I like to challenge accepted cultural dogma and ideology. Each of my works features a theatrical set defined by a stage with actors, props, and a backdrop. The actors in the set consist of everyday objects brought into combinations and interactions that attempt to elicit inquiry. The content of the artwork focuses on themes such as time, aging, nostalgia, the footless pursuit of Utopia, and the conditions of ideology which disable our rational minds. Each image is constructed using conventions of visual realism, but with alterations that offer dreamlike possibilities. Themes and objects appear and re-appear. Each work becomes a framed snapshot of a moment in theatrical space, noticed briefly, and then forgotten once more, a fraction of time when reality is breached and a frozen glimpse into the mental theatre of Eternity is experienced, an opening when the viewer can catch the faint hint of cotton candy breezing in from the sideshow midway, the pastel moment of a lost memory, a slight reminder that the past is never absent, and that the future is always in front of us.” —Don Bergland