In a capital and a culture that continues to lean heavily toward the tried-and-true, the dryly programmatic, and the "expert" consensus, Galleri Bergman for six years answered an acute need for genuinely holistic investigational art.
First opening in 2006 in Helsinki's Punavuori District, Galleri Bergman provided a unique beacon – a lighthouse of sorts – for uncompromisingly experimental artists and art lovers. Founded and managed by Swedish artist/musician Anders Bergman, the gallery for six years provided a robust open space for pioneering artists and their adventurous audiences from around the world.
From the start, Bergman saw the gallery as a natural extension of his own work and values. The gallery's first show in fact featured Bergman's own work. His simple moment of epiphany came when he surveyed his installation and thought: "Fuck! I should invite my friends to show here too – no charge!"
What Galleri Bergman's diverse exhibitions all had in common were a relentlessly exploratory spirit, and a deep appreciation for that potentially transcendent place where objects, immateriality and experience met and mixed – and in ways both large and small anticipated the future of serious art.
