Enoch Bergsten (born 1979, USA) graduated from the Free Art School in 2008. His previous solo exhibition took place at Galleria Mutageeni, in Helsinki, the same year. He also participated in the celebratory exhibition of the Free Art School, held in Pori Art Museum. Works of Enoch Bergsten can be found in the collections of the Suomen Taideyhdistys ry art association as well as in private collections. Bergsten’s recent works consist of drawings.
In the works now on display, the artist examines the various techniques and esthetic variations of drawing. For him, a drawing can be a painterly ink wash just as well as an accurate abstraction. Bergsten sets an example of how diverse the world of drawing is. In contemporary art, the status of drawings is based on this diversity as well as the diverse meanings given to them by popular drawings and art history. Linear works are crossroads for artistic and scientific ways of illustrating issues. The illustrative sketches, familiar from scientific contexts, are related to artistic representations and vice versa. The drawings of Enoch Bergsten are his own way of revealing a wide cultural tradition.
The atmosphere and appearances of the works in the exhibition are various and represent Bergsten’s artistic versatility accurately: His works can be humoristic, melancholic, small-scale, or king-size. Bergsten masters his technique, and thus tells his audience that in spite of its long history, drawing is not a thing of the past Drawing reaches to several directions which makes it an appropriate choice for contemporary artists. Enoch Bergsten approaches this widely, in terms of both content and style.
FD Juha-Heikki Tihinen
