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MIKE BERG The Little House of my Desire

Mike Berg is an American contemporary artist who moved from New York to Istanbul with his family in 1999, for a change. Borrowing and synthesizing elements from opposing cultures is the favourite game of this artist whose speciality is to blur the distinctions between fine art and decorative arts. Istanbul was thought a great destination. His canvases ressemble textiles or carpets, or rather a reinterpretation of them. However, although some of his works ressemble carpets, they are also very different and would probably not be taken to the market by any Persians being too subttle. Berg paints on wood, linen, paper, glass, and metal on which he staggers elegant colums of rosette inspired by ancient islamic textiles, ornemental figures coming from decorative details taken from 16th-century PERSİAN rug, to which he added few painterly marks of his own, motifs inspired by peeling layers of wallpaper that he discovered in a Tribeca tenement buiding, or even motifs borrowed from the ornate friezes of New York's turn architecture. However these borrowings are rarely copied litteraly, and many more motifs that you would swear were derived from some rococo or late 19th century source are in fact Berg's own invention. Istanbul has been a great place for the artist where he has found source for every kind of islamic material which became the pool of his own vision for his latest work. In the occasion of exhibiting his work in Dulcinea, he combines his previous work done in America with the work he has recently done in Istanbul. In the past two decades Mike Berg has exhibited extensively throughout the United States and Europe. This is his first exhibition in Turkey. Solo exhibits include Lee Arthur Studio in New York, Earl Mc Grath Gallery in Los Angeles, The Queen's museum in New York,Guid'Arte Gallery in Rome, Italy, and Boulder Contemporary Art. His works are part of higly famous collections, including museum collections, corporate collections and private collections (Ed Ruscha, Denis Hopper, John Chamberlain...)

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