John von Bergen is a US born artist who has been based in Berlin for the
last eight years. His studio, a large space in Wedding, is a true
working space – John works primarily with sculpture and installation,
and his material experiments, works-in-progress, and many completed
works are installed around the walls.
Everything is installed in such a way that it was virtually impossible to tell where
the wall ended and the sculpture began. Protruding out, the work appears
as a fantastical extension of the wall reaching out into the room. For
his show at the project space Smack Mellon last year, John took this
strategy to an extreme – creating a 45 foot (15 meter) large-scale,
site-specific work that appeared to emerge from the walls of the gallery
itself. The piece, Whip Lash, appeared to involve a large metallic
pillar (cast from an actual pillar in the gallery) being supported
mid-air by two huge wall ‘protrusions.’ The usually neutral and austere
white wall of the space was transformed into an almost antagonistic
force – one defying physics, logic and reality.
