2023-03-29 - Don Bergland: Sideshow Style (Series of 12)

Don Bergland · 2023-03-29T00:00:00Z

Showtime  brings together twelve paintings from Don Bergland's  Sideshow  period, a body of work that established the symbolic vocabulary underpinning much of his later artistic development. Created through the assembly of digital 3D models in carefully staged environments and completed in Photoshop, these paintings transform portraiture into theatre, presenting enigmatic figures and improbable objects as participants in silent philosophical dramas. Across the series, familiar forms dissolve into symbolic presences. Children, animals, mechanical objects, and hybrid beings occupy imagined stages where ordinary logic is quietly suspended. Sheep become companions, witnesses, or collective voices; birds and fish assume the weight of allegory; architectural fragments and wheeled objects suggest perpetual movement without destination. Rather than illustrating stories, each painting proposes a visual meditation whose meaning remains deliberately unresolved. Although diverse in imagery, the works are united by Bergland's disciplined approach to composition and his fascination with psychological stillness. Every figure occupies its stage with quiet conviction, inviting contemplation rather than explanation. The resulting collection embodies the defining characteristics of the  Sideshow  aesthetic: theatrical surrealism, symbolic restraint, and a persistent exploration of identity, memory, innocence, and the mysterious architecture of belief. Viewed together, these paintings reveal the emergence of a distinctive visual language that would continue to evolve throughout Bergland's career while remaining rooted in the timeless theatre of the imagination.