08/04/2026
Berger & Föhr see in grids. The grid is not applied after the fact. It is the structure through which compositions are found, varied, tested, and brought into physical form.
Drawings are made in pencil, through a machine-assisted process refined over the better part of a decade. Visible gradients are made from lines too fine and too closely spaced to resolve by eye. They overlap and build, pass over pass, until individual marks become a continuous field. As the pencil wears, less graphite or pigment reaches the paper and each stroke widens—the surface drifts even as the system holds.
None of it is automatic. The machine draws but decides nothing, moving only as each pass is configured for it. The marks are mechanical. The judgment behind them is not. They occupy the space between.
What the gradients hold is time—not a single moment but its passage. The gradients are not an image of change, but change itself, held on paper.
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.
“Resolution: Daniel Chen | Berger & Föhr” opens this Saturday, August 8, with a reception from 5–8 PM. All artists will be in attendance.
Images: 1) Berger & Föhr, ‘Graphite Gradients Number Twenty-Four, Graphite on Coventry Rag Vellum,
50 7/8 x 38 7/8 inches
2) Berger & Föhr, ‘Graphite Gradients Number Twenty-Six, Graphite on Coventry Rag Vellum, 45 1/8 x 31 1/8 inches
3) Berger & Föhr, ‘Graphite Gradients Number Thirty-One, Graphite on Coventry Rag Vellum, 37 1/8 x 25 1/8 inches
4) Berger & Föhr, ‘Color Gradients RGBY Three, Colored pencil on Coventry Rag Vellum, 37 1/8 x 25 1/8 inches
5) Todd Berger and Lucian Föhr
Photos by BEAU WALTERS
