Nick Ryan Gallery is pleased to present Resolution, a two-person exhibition featuring new work by San Francisco–based painter Daniel Chen and Boulder-based artist duo Berger & Föhr.
Working in distinct visual languages, Chen and Berger & Föhr investigate the ways images emerge, transform, and are ultimately resolved through perception. Chen's paintings filter memory and lived experience through fragmented planes of color and form that shift between recognition and abstraction. Berger & Föhr's machine-assisted drawings translate systems, patterns, and material processes into intricate visual structures. Bringing these practices into dialogue, Resolutionconsiders how meaning is constructed from fragments, how images are shaped through both intention and process, and how viewers participate in completing what they see.
Daniel Chen is a San Francisco–based painter who spent his formative years between the Bay Area and Taiwan. He studied at the Academy of Art University and California College of the Arts and comes from a family of artists, including a maternal grandfather who was a traditional calligraphy painter and art teacher and a mother who is an oil painter based in Kaohsiung, Taiwan.
“I make paintings of memories. Memories are often fragmented and fuzzy; we tend to remember them as a whole while the edges blur and details fray. Though individual fragments may be incomplete, the larger picture emerges when viewed together.”
— Daniel Chen
Berger & Föhr is the collaborative practice of Todd Berger (b. 1975, Chicago, IL) and Lucian Föhr (b. 1988, Boulder, CO). Working together since 2002, the duo creates geometric abstractions through machine-assisted drawing and other process-based media. Their work is grounded in systems, repetition, and the interplay between human decision-making and predetermined structures.
For their Graphite Gradients series, Berger & Föhr employ custom drawing devices to build tonal fields through repeated passes and carefully calibrated variations in pressure, density, and overlap. Though governed by a systematic framework, each work retains subtle traces of material and process, balancing precision with variability.
