The Big Buffet in the Sky, Andrea Bergen, Moth Belly Gallery

By Taylor Snowberger

Psychedelic mammatus clouds, known for preceding storms, halo a hyper-real American Bison. Fur ripples over its musculature, its body rearing over a gallery of feral animals. Some appear to be domesticated escapees, others laboratory runaways, all cavorting in the parking lot of a burning JCPenney, wearing expressions of derangement, serenity, or oblivious rapture. All are complicit in a crime with which they are unquestionably pleased. The ground is littered with evidence, food court fare and thriving flora. Nearby, a kitten rears up to high-five a rat, a glimpse of brief camaraderie absolving their age-old rivalry. Overhead, a pigeon resembles an archangel, brandishing a Rocket Pop and a slice of pizza in its talons, its neck ringed by a pink doughnut. A vacant eyed Chihuahua begs, a Rhesus Macaque basks, and a Monarch Butterfly alights upon a gas can in the foreground. Like the scholars of Raphael’s School of Athens, each figure draws the eye in a new direction.

We'll Get It Right This Time, 60 x 48 x 1.75 Hand cut paper and gel medium on wood panel with UV topcoat, 2026. Photo by Brandon Joseph Baker 

"Doomscrolling" may be a modern term, but for inhabitants of organized society, street-corner prophets have always wailed reminders that the end is nigh. If you were to close your eyes and imagine a post-doomsday America, what would you see? Perhaps something akin to Eugène Delacroix's The Liberty Leading the People, replacing Lady Liberty with a Terminator-esque robot brandishing a Star-Spangled Banner, a jumble of wounded figures in red hats flailing beneath her. Or maybe Théodore Géricault's The Raft of the Medusa, switching out thwarted French sailors for sobbing office workers clinging to the floating remnants of an AI billboard. For even the most self-effacing of us in the digital age, these images might prove a little gratuitous. What if we were to instead take comfort in the silver lining of our demise? I implore you to flock to Moth Belly Gallery's current exhibit, The Big Buffet in the Sky by Andrea Bergen. Her alternative vision for an apocalyptic future occupies all the fetishistic maximalism of Baroque art, paired with the emotional indulgence of the Romantic period, softened by a pop-art color palette to bring the pyramidal compositions of our forebears into a contemporary timeline.

And They Lived On The Poodle Forever,  36” x 48” x 1.5” Hand cut paper and gel medium on wood panel with UV topcoat, 2026.  Photo by Brandon Joseph Baker 

"It’s my way of confronting the horrors of climate change," Bergen says of her work. "I’m not trying to preach. I take steps in my personal life to reduce my impact, but I’m thinking about the irony of making this work, and trying to come to terms with the fact that I can’t do anything about what I’m seeing because of the system that's been created around us. I am constantly processing that my existence is itself harmful."

Whiskers Deep In The Chow Chow, 48 x 70 x 32, Mixed media papier-mache sculpture, 2026. Photo by Brandon Joseph Baker 

At the show's opening, attendees flit around Bergen, asking questions about her process and giving due credit for the staggering exhibition. Of the 40 or so works packed into the gallery, consisting of suspended papier-mâché animals clutching processed foods, meticulous collages ranging from person sized to computer monitor sized, some with three-dimensional frames shaped like candy bars and hot dogs, almost everything is already demarcated with the red dots of ownership by 7:30 (the show opened at 6:00). Bergen is inside chatting amiably, taking the time to speak with everyone who approaches her. I have to stand stock-still to avoid bumping into a four-foot-tall, three-foot-diameter hamburger topped with a tabby cat, his defined butt cheeks clinging to its sesame seed bun. Enchanted by his dilated pupils, salivating tongue, and the can of soda exploding from his right paw, I spend a lot of time with said cat. I have no choice; the gallery is packed, and there is nowhere else to stand. On close observation, a very specific picture of America comes into focus.

Andrea Bergen, Burger Frame, 19 x 25 x 5 Mixed media papier-mache sculpture, 2026. Photo by Brandon Joseph Baker

 Petals And Pricks, 12 x 12 x 1.5 Hand cut paper and gel medium on wood panel with UV topcoat, 2026. Photo by Brandon Joseph Baker

Much of this show focuses on processed food and animals, but throughout Bergen's oeuvre, a kaleidoscope of America's unique brand of excess emerges: clown hotels, monster trucks, Waffle House, Dolly Parton, and the Sonoran Desert. This collection of imagery creates an index of experience usually confined to sardonic critiques. Bergen, however, is anything but cynical. While she has lived in the Bay Area for (almost) her entire life and hasn't done an extensive cross-country road trip, her travels to places like Las Vegas and Gatlinburg have inspired her worldview.

"I revel in that aesthetic," Bergen explains. "There is this tacky, joyful thing that America does well. When I visited Gatlinburg, I felt like I was inside of a cuckoo clock. What I do is like a visual shorthand for the culture we have created. My work has a bit of tongue-in-cheek irreverence, but it isn't supposed to be ironic. I do actually enjoy experiencing these places."

While Bergen takes a macro view of the U.S. of A., hailing from the Bay Area had major influence. She had a solid elementary art education, took regular trips to art museums with her mom, and attended CCA in San Francisco in the early 2010’s. However, it wasn’t only art institutions that influenced her. Of her childhood, Bergen says, 

"I went to all the museums when I was a kid. My mom would take me to the Oakland Museum, the de Young, and the Legion of Honor, the MoMA, all that stuff. I also had this amazing, classic nurturing elementary school art teacher, Mr. Hershcopf, who I still think about sometimes. But also, my mom would take home sick animals and we would attempt to nurse them back to health or take them to the humane society. We also spent a lot of time at Joaquin Miller Park or visiting the Lindsay Wildlife Museum. I know this sounds kinda weird but they had a program where you could actually rent guinea pigs and rabbits for the weekend, so we did that, too.”

Andrea Bergen, Fudged Again,Original 14 x 15 x 11 Mixed media papier-mache sculpture, 2026.  Photo by Brandon Joseph Baker 

Bergen, in other words, is kind of like if Andy Warhol, Lisa Frank and Jane Goodall decided to raise a child in the Louvre together, and taught her to say ‘hella’. It needs to be noted that Bergen's work has deep foundations in art history. Her compositional know-how is grounded in a serious acumen, and her understanding of color theory rivals any household name in pop art. Alongside the chops, Bergen is a softie. She loves animals, color, sugar, and kitsch Americana. She knows her way around a pair of scissors, and she’ll tell you all about it if you just walk up to her and ask nicely. She’s got her hand on the pulse of the planet, and the other hand in a box of carefully selected construction paper, occasionally tapping out of one or another to pet her cat. If you want to know what that ends up looking like on paper, her show will be up at Moth Belly Gallery until the end of September, but a couple other opportunities you’ll have for learning more about her or snagging a piece of art for your apartment are on the horizon. On August 22 from 1-6, she’ll be doing an on site technique demonstration. The gallery will also be hosting a print release on September 5th from 6-9. Moth Belly is just off the corner of Larkin and Geary and has open gallery hours on Fridays and Saturdays from 1-6 p.m and by appointment.