Pictured: Pearl Berger's Orbital Abstractions showing at Define Art Gallery and Studio. Photo by Phil Lederer.

Another year, another calendar, another notch on the yardstick whose full measure remains unknown until that ultimate end. And on Palm Avenue tonight, the galleries kick off 2025 with the first Art Walk of the season, featuring a new group show at Burns Gallery on Palm, an exhibition of abstract painting from Midge Johnson at MARA Art Studio & Gallery, and, secreted in the back of Define Art Gallery and Studio, an intimate solo show highlighting the cold wax art of Pearl Berger, whose work blurs the lines between painting and sculpture.

Entitled Orbital Abstractions, the one-room show invites viewers to step into the center of Berger’s universe, surrounded by 20 cosmos-inspired abstract paintings on circular birchwood panels. Tactile and textured, they look like alien worlds waiting to be explored, shaped perhaps by the slow erosion of eons rather than Berger’s bare hands.

The effect comes in part from the choice of medium—beeswax hand-mixed with oil paint. The result is a malleable paste that Berger describes as cake batter and slathers on the birchwood panels with pallet knives and her hands. And for every color she uses, she has to mix that particular paste. It’s a labor-intensive process and not half-done. When the whole thing nears dry, Berger pulls out her sculpting tools and begins to carve.

Some paintings will have as many as 50 coats of the thick, hand-mixed pigments, the mounds of accreted experience forming layers of identity. Carving through this geology erases none entirely but exposes the interplay that allows something greater than the sum of its parts to emerge. Each piece is a story told in tectonics, isolated like planets in the void but bound by a hopeful gravity.

“Every circle has its own personality,” says Berger, “yet they’re all connected. Every shape and every texture has a reason to be.”

Maybe that’s true for this planet too.

On display at Define Art Gallery and Studio, Orbital Abstractions runs through January 31. An opening reception with the artist is tonight from 6pm to 8pm.

Pictured: Pearl Berger's Orbital Abstractions showing at Define Art Gallery and Studio. Photo by Phil Lederer.

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