Color is both an aesthetic and conceptual force in visual culture, shaping meaning, perception, and emotional resonance. The Big Blue, a group exhibition at Bergman Gallery, assembles works by Reuben Paterson, Mahiriki Tangaroa, Mark Cross, Lucas Grogan, and Andy Leleisi'uao, each exploring the multiplicity of blue as a chromatic and symbolic entity. From its associations with tranquility and introspection to its presence in celestial and maritime landscapes, blue serves as a unifying yet diversely interpreted element across the exhibition.
The exhibition originates from Andy Leleisi’uao’s Harmonic Island, a five-panel work saturated in blue, which prompted curator Ben Bergman to build a conversation around the hue. Paterson’s glittering works, including Far / Nearer, introduce a dynamic interplay of surface and light, evoking movement and transformation. Mark Cross’s Approaching Cyan, created in 2008, extends his engagement with hyperrealist landscapes and environmental commentary, reinforcing his ongoing dialogue with Bergman Gallery. Meanwhile, Mahiriki Tangaroa departs from her established palette, incorporating softer blues that nuance her signature visual language.
Lucas Grogan, a recent addition to the gallery’s roster, contributes Good Luck With That, a piece that blends intricate, rhythmic patterning with textual ambiguity. Drawing from quilting traditions, Grogan constructs an altar-like composition that oscillates between reverence and irony. His poetic inscriptions, simultaneously personal and universal, invite multiple readings, embodying both optimism and resignation.
While blue functions as the exhibition’s formal anchor, the works extend beyond color to engage with materiality, cultural narratives, and conceptual depth. Whether through the ethereal shimmer of Paterson’s surfaces, the introspective tonal shifts in Tangaroa’s work, or the structured compositions of Grogan, The Big Blue underscores the ways in which artists mobilize color as both a subject and a strategy. This exhibition is not simply an exploration of pigment but an inquiry into the layered significances that blue—ever present, mutable, and deeply evocative—can assume.
