Dan Bergman

About Dan Bergman

Dan Bergman grew up in Chicago and Cleveland. After a 30-year business career he left to sculpt full time. In the years since he has appeared in many solo and group exhibitions and completed a number of public works. He is particularly known for intensely convoluted welded pieces, wind-driven kinetic works and experimentation with mathematical topics such as tensegrity.

Artist Statement

I am currently making abstract sculpture, primarily in steel. In its everyday industrial forms⎯I-beams, pipes, plates, cable⎯steel is the bones of the material culture in which we live. Working with it feels like playing with the very stuff of our civilization. I cut, weld and twist it into drawings in space that I think of as musical: lyrical inner forms move in counterpoint to a restraining skeleton or frame. Tension and compression are contrasted to intensify the feeling of contained energy.

Most of my pieces are in some way pictorial⎯either spatial or figurative. They evoke memories of real or imaginary places that have emotional associations for me: hidden crannies where as a child I could imagine being invisible; high places that were frightening but exhilarating; spaces full of strange objects that bewilder but intrigue me.