NYAB Event - Kermit Berg "Nuclear Family / Wohlstandstraum"

Kermit Berg "Nuclear Family / Wohlstandstraum"

This event has ended.
At Lyons Wier Gallery
Media: Photography

In his latest photographic series, American artist Kermit Berg explores the Modernist Postwar period in Berlin and the U.S. when Europeans and Americans alike embraced consumerism and high design for reassurance, escape, & prestige.

The photography artist, who works and lives in Berlin and San Francisco, has created a suite of inter-related portfolios entitled "Nuclear Family / Wohlstandstraum." The atmosphere of naīve optimism and longing for tranquility is contrasted with the fear of Cold War threats just before the wall divided Berlin.

Berg elegantly captures objects of the period to interpret this era of consumerism and advertising as both came of age. His images contradict the prevailing perfunctory view of architecture and design during the mid-century period as having offered-up mostly insubstantial kitsch in the midst of political uncertainty and tenuous alliances.

Although resources were particularly scarce in Post-war Europe, modern design - initially also in the Soviet sector of Berlin - prevailed. The modernist objects and architecture that Berg has selected both describe and defend a short-lived milieu with self-assurance and clarity.

The exhibition "Nuclear Family / Wohlstandstraum" is informed by an authentic American-German relationship of the 1950s, referenced tangentially through a suite of eight text-only panels, highlighting exchanges between the artist's own family and another family living in Berlin. The panels bear randomized first person chronologies, revealing lifestyle details against a political backdrop of the era.