Kelly Berg’s second solo show, AMAZONIA is the encore to her successful debut exhibition, SUBTERRANEAN. Her first solo show at Frank Pictures resulted in acquisitions by the Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation and the North Carolina Museum of Art permanent collection, and in her ultimate inclusion the Carnegie Art Museum show “California Art: Selections from the Frederick R. Weisman Foundation” as well as several important private collections. In Kelly Berg’s recent series of paintings titled “Amazonia”, a controlled chaos emerges from the overall compositions, which are formed by intricate series of acrylic and ink layers. Through her painting process, Kelly is interested in expanding the language of abstraction through the use of pattern, shapes, and pictorial imagery, including self-portraits. In reaction to the current state of our world where one is constantly receiving an overload of visual stimuli through television screens, billboards, the internet, and social media, these paintings capture the process of sorting through this imagery from an autobiographical point of view. The paintings act as metaphors for excavation and invite the viewer in to explore and uncover the many kaleidoscopic layers that echo the many cultural influences that they’ve been drawn from. Born in Concord, Massachusetts in 1986, Kelly moved to Minneapolis, Minnesota at the age of 3 where she grew up creating art using a variety of mediums. In 2004, she received a National Scholastic Art Award for a series of works including paintings and drawings. She went on to receive her Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree from Rhode Island School of Design in 2008, where she focused on figurative painting. Kelly moved to Los Angeles in February of 2009, where her work has been shown in group shows in Los Angeles and Orange County galleries. In November of 2011, Kelly was selected as one of the ten Los Angeles artists to participate in an artist-in-residency program called "The Simply Perfect Art Project" supported by the Patron Spirits Company in collaboration with The Los Angeles Art Association/ Gallery 825. During her weeklong residency, Kelly created one of her paintings live in a storefront window studio at the Roosevelt Hotel for a pedestrian audience passing by on Hollywood Boulevard and time-lapse video documentation.