Artwork copyright Paul Berger. Photo courtesy of the artist.

Artwork copyright Paul Berger. Photo courtesy of Washington State Arts Commission, 2017.

Mathguy, 1989

Paul Berger
(American, born 1948)

Location: Manson High School, Manson

ABOUT THE ARTWORK

Mathguy is part of a series by artist Paul Berger. He created the layered compositions by recording and digitizing television news segments. The series investigates how context and composition can change the meaning of images. The series also highlights how our use of computer-based designs and programs has evolved rapidly in the past thirty years.

Berger created this series for Multiples: The Sciences and Art (1991), an exhibition of ten microcollections commissioned to tour Washington State school districts. The microcollections offer different perspectives of ten artists exploring ideas and issues related to science, and ask students to re-consider assumed and widely accepted aspects of science.

This artwork was acquired for the State Art Collection in partnership with Multiples: The Sciences and Art Collection.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Artist Paul Berger is a pioneer in exploring the artistic possibilities of digital imagery. He combines and manipulates imagery from a huge variety of sources to investigate the meaning of images and how we dissect them. Berger notes, "I am not so much interested in the single, isolated photo image as I am in the way that images group themselves together in ways that provide us with context and meaning. I am interested in responding to common image groupings such as the printed page, the television screen, the computer printout." He first included a computer in the making of his art in the early 1980s.

Berger served as professor of art at the University of Washington for thirty-five years, co-founding the photography program in 1978. He earned a Bachelor of Arts (1970) from the University of California at Los Angeles and a Master of Fine Arts (1973) from the Visual Studies Workshop in Rochester, New York.