Lightning, volcanoes, geysers and ice floes possess hellish glory whose terror is facilely reduced to quaintness. Depicting these comely but deadly natural forces, Kelly Berg‘s artworks illustrate humans’ relationship to the earth’s crust as a labyrinthine blend of fascination and repulsion, preservation and destruction. Each of her pieces in “Unknown Horizon” at Craig Krull is a rectangular panel encrusted with sculptural protuberances in high relief. Three-dimensional components made of fabric, plaster, mesh and paint resemble lava, snow, gold and copper. Assuming fashionable metallic panache like framed mirrors, bracelets and necklaces, Berg’s prickly sculpture-paintings such as Before the Gold Rush (2017) bring to mind the ironic violence of how precious stones and metals are shatteringly evulsed from terrain to be cut, polished, set, and treasured as fetishes. In Mysteries of Inner Earth (2018) and Golden Plume (2017), gold glass spikes emanate from cavern-painted canvases like brilliant rays of light, poking outward as though to protect the enhaloed painting, but also jabbing inward, as though to skewer the stalactites and stalagmites within. Such pictures, which evoke spelunkers’ or miners’ lucid glimpses beyond limestone curtains, convey how caves and rock formations are visited and vaunted even as they are excavated and destroyed by people and natural forces. Most impressive, Rift (2016) and Edge of the World (2018, pictured above) exalt the infernal mystery of Earth’s periodic magma ejections. Counterpointing Berg’s plutonian diadems, the vivid abstract paintings in Ned Evans‘ adjacent show portray cubistic manmade manifolds suffused with meditative textural subtleties. Paintings such as Lubad (2018) evoke interiors overlaid with mindscapes and digital fabrications. Though his compositions congeal from afar, Evans’ surfaces requite close attention.

Craig Krull Gallery
2525 Michigan Ave., # B-3
Santa Monica, CA 90404
Show runs through May 26