Thomas Berding: Makeshift Futures

Exhibition Dates: May 21 - June 15, 2013

Reception: Thursday, May 23, 6 - 8 pm

Taking cues from the post-industrial landscape, provisional models, and makeshift networks, Thomas Berding's recent work explores how the planned and built environment and the traffic of more spontaneous gestures and improvisational DIY aesthetics inform each other. The resultant paintings image a world that simultaneously is being constructed and disassembled. Characterized by disruptions and interference, shifting congruencies and tenuous alignments, the paintings also identify the fragility of representation and the insistence of materiality as recurrent themes. Berding was born in Cincinnati, OH, received a MFA from Rhode Island School of Design, and currently lives and works in East Lansing, MI. His paintings have been recognized with awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, and the NEA/Mid America Arts Alliance and his work has been exhibited in numerous venues including David Klein Gallery in Detroit, the Nelson-Atkins Museum, Rochester Institute of Technology, the Fort Wayne Museum of Art, The School of Fine Arts Gallery, Indiana University, The Painting Center, and The Rhode Island School of Design Museum.

View the Catalogue: Thomas Berding_Catalogue.pdf