Lisa Bergant Koi: November 2023
Lisa Bergant Koi has exhibited nationally including solo exhibitions at Harper College in Palatine, Illinois, and at Point State Park University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Her paintings have been selected for national exhibitions by esteemed jurors from the Cleveland Museum of Contemporary Art, the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, the Akron Museum of Art, and the New Orleans Museum of Art among others. Her work is held in the corporate collections of PNC Bank and The Benter Foundation, the permanent collection of Harper College, and in private collections across the country.
She holds an MA from Illinois State University and a BFA from Bowling Green State University. Originally from Cleveland, Ohio, she currently lives and works in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Having paid particular attention to my own manner of observation, I attempt to translate my experience of seeing into two-dimensional representations. This endeavor has resulted in visually complex abstract paintings and drawings that often feel peculiar if not confounding.
In the studio, with sketches I've made of my surroundings while traveling through the landscape as my source material, I layer lines and shapes replicated from these sketches into indeterminate pictorial spaces. Through the form of my paintings — the expansive line-work, the non-representational color, the ambiguous shapes, or the empty spaces between canvases, for example — I strive to share with, and replicate for the viewer the duality of awe and perplexity I experience between the natural world and the world we've made.
Lisa's work will also be featured in our upcoming exhibition, 113x113, November 10–December 22, 2023 in the gallery and November 11, 2023–January 5, 2024 online!
Recent Exhibitions
They're just lines.
Earlier this year, Lisa had a solo show in the Armstrong Gallery at the McLean County Arts Center in Bloomington, Illinois, titled They're just lines. The nine mixed media works in this exhibition were created as an installation specifically for this gallery's configuration. The work ranges from an 18 x18" painting on canvas to a 5' x 21' mixed media work on paper. All pieces share the title, moving reality.
Subset
The following month, Lisa traveled to West Chicago for the opening of Subset, her two-person show with artist Greg Edmondson at Studio Break Gallery. Her contribution to the show was a new collection of small paintings titled stuck in gray.
