Doubt is embracing me as I face an ever more speculative reality. To exclaim has become synonymous to knowing, and we know everything. The public discourse is dominated by assertions, what that is true or not does no longer matter. And what did it really mean to begin with – truth that is – what makes something real?
Margareta Bergman is not looking for answers. Rather her work dives into doubt as an active state. Intuitively, she works under the mantra of «thinking as little as possible», and in her studio she is free to be open about the insecurity. This associative and unfixed point of entry to photography redeems itself in the format of the exhibition as something indefinite. What meets the audience can in turn often seem ungraspable, possibly it cannot be described, only experienced.
In parallel to society growing increasingly polemic, art has been left with an explanation complex. More and more one is confronted with questions regarding function and utility – what does art mean? What’s the point? Why do we need this? Bergman, on her side, refuses to reduce her work to an expression of any statement. This is emphasized in the inherent contradiction of the title of her exhibition at BO: OCH…INTE (AND…NOT); can something both be together and not at all?
This paradoxical duality is further mirrored in the works at display, a mix of photographs, textiles and sculptural structures in various formats. The photographs are recognizably «Bergmanesque» in the sense that the motives are randomly detailed. Bodies, of humans and other creatures, are framed in a manner that makes them immediately appear as foreign and/or strange. A finger, scalp or hairy belly has been exposed to a large scale. Appearing as abject, possibly even grotesque, but also funny and harmless. The latter is supported by Bergman’s material play, where a string of tassels suddenly gets a central role as a contrasting element. Throughout the exhibition human motives are intersected with quotidian landscapes and interiors. A sausage fast, a tree trunk surrounded by sticks and a mysterious stork all come to play their part in the undisguised confusion orchestrated by Bergman. In this scenery the lack of words becomes essential to the saying of nothing, encouraging one to take art for what it is – not bland, but ambivalent.
Bergman’s photographs are mainly black and white, metaphorically placed in a grey zone area. Not understanding one’s surroundings may cause a sense of being disempowered, equally it can also be liberating. Art can be a third way, beyond the dichotomic world order; as Theodor Adorno argues in his essay «Presuppositions: On the Occasion of a Reading by Hans G. Helms», art is not to be understood in the same sense as a foreign language or a lingual term. In this inexplicability there is a potentiality of experiencing ourselves and reality in alternative ways. As Adorno also states, if we are to insist on there being ways to comprehend art, it is crucial to accept that this understanding can and should not be translated into what can be seen as a simply rational statement.
Art is a language of its own, an independent expression. This is the anchor point of Bergman’s work. To not explain something does not correlate to a lack of will to converse. On the contrary, freeing oneself from the enlightened urge for answers, might reveal new outlines. It may elevate us from a decreasingly interesting world in monitor, and thus create space for new gazes, thoughts, and ideas. Sometimes silence is just as efficient as words well thought out.
The exhibition essay was written by BO’s Director Una Mathiesen Gjerde.
Margareta Bergman (b. 1955, Örebro) lives and works in Oslo. She is educated at Konstfack in Stockholm, the Norwegian National Academy of Craft and Art Industry, and the Norwegian National Academy of Fine Arts. Previous solos include the following Kunstnerforbundet, Oplandia, LNM, and Trafo kunsthall. Her works have been acquired to the collections of the Norwegian National Museum, Telenor Art Collection, and KORO. Bergman has also released several publications with the publishing house Multipress.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The exhibition is generously supported by Arts and Culture Norway and the Norwegian Visual Artist’s fund.
