Don Bergland PhD

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On the cutting edge of creative studio research and practise, Dr. Don Bergland, Associate Professor of Digital Arts at the University of Victoria, has been shaping a body of inventive artistic work which integrates traditional and digital techniques in a style he calls "Technosurrealism." American critics are describing his work as "comprising the forward edge of the contemporary Neo-Surrealist movement" and “work which crystallizes its new destination.” Other reviewers have stated that his creative work is “re-inventing the Surrealist Renaissance.” In the last 6 months, his work has won a showing in 12 international juried exhibitions in galleries ranging from Los Angeles, to New York, New Zealand, and Rome Italy. During this time, he has won 2 exhibition awards in both Canada and in the USA and won sponsorship for a 2005 Solo International Exhibition at the Caladan Gallery in Beverley, Massachusetts with a scheduled encore Solo Exhibition set for May, 2006. He recently had a body of innovative work successfully juried for the Project30 Gallery in New York city. He is currently working through a series of studio research issues for his intended 2006 schedule of over 20 international exhibition venues.

Don Bergland's work consists of visionary icons portraying human emergence. Archetypal metaphors entwined in myth, metamorphosis, resurrection, and regeneration, document the evolutionary shedding of our current consciousness. To achieve the proper psychological effect, the image making process centers on the digital construction of 3D models and environments. The world and its emergent figures are carefully modeled, posed, and “photographed.” The resulting images are then taken into digital processing programs for the application of graphic overlays. These simulate dimension, historicity, and internal structure. Recent works focus on the evolving nature of human transformation. Under the exacting gaze of our own evolutionary journey, our concluded archetypes petrify into rusted husks out of which our constructed future emerges as a proliferating metamorphosis.

www.donbergland.com/surreal