Solo Self-Reflection Shines in Dual Show

When the works of two visual artists cohabit the same wall space, the results always seem to fall on either side of a clear dichotomy. Either there is constructive interference where artistic harmony and concord make it such that the sum total is greater than the individual parts, or a spectacular train-wreck of a collapse results from divergent intentions. The work of Gerry Bergstein and Howard Johnson, featured at the Howard Yezerski Gallery in Boston, mercifully stays on its tracks, as both artists explore items of personal fetish, fascination and self-reflection.

Bergstein’s oil paintings dominate the exhibit, divided into two major thematic thrusts, both of which explore the notion and expand the definition of a self-portrait. One is a series of monochromatic studies that draw heavily on Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s “The Tower of Babel” paintings. In Bergstein’s “Mount II,” a decaying round structure emerges out of a charred and flat landscape. Fractured rising levels are energized by thin lines that betray the motion of a building buffeted by wind, as the sky overhead swirls in an array of wiry spiralling strokes and abstracted ghosted line drawings. Bergstein departs from Bruegel in that he invests his work with an incisive, visceral intensity, but his smaller canvases seem only preparatory studies for his central masterpiece, “Self-Portrait as Tower of Babel.”

Aside from being a grandiose, conflicted, psychological statement, “Babel” is infused with a dense griminess that foreshadows the ultimate demise of the mythological tower. The vaguely phallic structure references the Biblical tale of the Babylonians who attempted to construct a tower that would ascend to the heavens. Despite the provocative titling, however, his monochromatic apocalypses are more concerned with “mortality, power and a vacuum,” as Bergstein told The Crimson at the exhibit’s opening. They possess a vibrating, quivering energy and darkly morbid overtones from penetrating lines.

When Bergstein moves away from his studies in the second thematic section of this exhibit, he displays a lighter—if still self-reflexive—sensibility. Here Bergstein proffers up a series of unconventional self-portraits. Where traditionally a self-portrait concerns itself with external representations—and the artist’s internal state is then inferred from the image—here Bergstein directly represents the core of his being by covering an illustration of himself with a collage of images meaningful to him. As we would expect from a man who is on the faculty of Boston’s School of the Museum of Fine Arts, his visual vocabulary is verbose and wide. In his own words, Bergstein’s latest work includes “eveything from cubism to modernism. The inside of me is related to art history, humanist sensibilities from Piranesi to [The Simpson’s] Homer, from conceptual art to Da Vinci.”

Moreover, his work does not create typical collages. The images, instead of being assembled from a variety of media, are all painted directly onto canvas to resemble torn sheets of paper or wrinkled photographs. In “Sometimes a Cigar is Just a Cigar, and Sometimes a Pipe is Not a Pipe,” he works from a reference to Rene Magritte’s classic “Ceci n’est pas une pipe” and from a smouldering cigar; he exposes organic components of heart, bone and vascular tissue in boxed-off frames. The work juxtaposes Homer Simpson with a Renaissance pencil portrait and a photograph of Sigmund Freud with a cartoon of a non-Disneyfied Pinnochio figure. The sheer volume of Bergstein’s icons requires considerable time to parse through his allusions, but close scrutiny rewards the viewer with finely attuned detail.

Out of this exhibit’s ordered mess, Bergstein and Johnson meld because they are both “excessive imagists,” said Bergstein. “We love the body, cartoony images and horror.” To that, Johnson adds an attentive eye to detail. “I think we work very well,” said Johnson. “We’re both visually obsessive.” For Johnson, that form of obsession comes in the form of personal fetish in his exhibit titled “G-String Theophany: Adoration Series 1998 --.” Using translucent Mylar architectural plans, Johnson mixes garish hues and iconographic objects, the most provocative being sliced sections of womens’ g-string underwear. He attaches the garments to the surface with tacks and red-painted razor blades, surrounding them with playing cards, corn plasters, stickers and Band-Aids. The g-strings assume any number of shapes, from a praying mantis in “Marcel: Please Don’t Feed the Mantis” to a marionette gothic knight in “Wenceslas Puppet.” On the surface of the plans, he draws caricatured vignettes and figures seemingly squeezed from a toothpaste tube in outlandish, bright colors.

While Johnson’s collages are far more dense and not nearly as easily decipherable as Bergstein’s lucid imagery, his prints are oddly engrossing for their experimentation with mixed elements. Pencil crayons applied to the Mylar surface produce a visible texture identical to pastels and the medium only lends itself to a finite number of revisions. Ink lines must be removed with rubbing alcohol, which degrades the surface, so Johnson’s pieces must be planned out ahead of time. There is a comforting symmetry to much of the work, and subtle humor throughout—but even though Johnson is visually provocative, his compositions feel ultimately cold, contrived and overwhelming.

Where Bergstein uses the surface to display his psyche, it seems as though Johnson is using surface for surface’s sake. Both offer different pastiches of personalized images, but Johnson distances his viewers by asserting that perhaps from his work, an understanding cannot be derived. Bergstein encourages his spectator to share in his mind. Consequently, the two artists align more visually than thematically. One out of two ain’t bad.