HALSEY MCKAY GALLERY

The title comes from Chiron, the centaur who gave up his immortality to be released from the agony of a poisoned wound, and in doing so helped free Prometheus. In doing so Chiron’s form was set among the stars as a constellation. These works also gave up part of themselves, the metal wire that once supported them. With it removed, they became lighter, more open, and more beautiful. Their silver, gold, and pearl filaments radiate from dense nodes and branch across the surface like star charts, maps, or neural networks, patterns of connection found in the sky, the city, and the brain. The root chiro-, Greek for hand, also points to the hand-built process behind them.

In addition for the first time, Bergstrom includes sculpture these small book-like objects read as ancient, barnacle-encrusted pages fused and folded, their surfaces pitted and coral-like, flecked with gold, silver. They feel less made than recovered, artifacts pulled from the sea floor, their contents long since absorbed into the material itself. Beside the constellation-like paintings, they suggest a second kind of record, ancient wisdom held in sediment and time rather than in the sky.