Entering MAG Galleries on a sunny Friday is like walking into an otherworldly pocket of San Francisco. A gigantic decapitated cow head greets you at the door. A painted possum sports a cowboy hat and rides a furious pink carousel pony. Humanity stares back from the yarn eyes of a frog head mounted like taxidermy.
On April 4, MAG Galleries held an opening reception for its “Game Night” exhibition in tandem with the Castro Art Walk, a community-organized initiative supporting local artists and businesses every first Friday of the month. The exhibition is a collaborative work between Andrea Bergen and Kai Tse, two artists who work in different mediums, but compatible themes.
Bergen’s first exhibit was with MAG Galleries in 2023, after gallery founder and owner Michael Gonzalez met Bergen and was astounded by her art — which he initially thought was paint, not layered paper. Much of Bergen’s work explores uncanny scenes of animals reveling in a world where the climate crisis has wiped out humanity. Every piece of paper in her collages is hand-cut, the precision further highlighted by saturated scenes reminiscent of Fauvism and Pop art.
Tse, also based in the Bay Area, explores the temporality of human experience with the environment. Tse’s main works, as a multimedia artist, use acrylic yarn or airbrush. His tufted rugs depict tearful animals, while clothing airbrushed with blooming flowers is a testament to the power of presence and love. Using bold colors, Tse’s art connects people with his experiences as a queer and transgender artist, but also universal experiences of love and life.
When Bergen and Tse met, they knew their art — both incorporating the natural world in commentaries on humanity — would make a natural collaboration. While Bergen works mainly with paper and Tse with yarn, the two teamed up to create painted papier-mache and acrylic yarn sculptures, respectively, for the exhibit.
At the end of the hallway, Tse’s “Humanity of the Stag” stands sentinel over the gallery. Created using acrylic yarn and papier-mache antlers, the stag head is displayed on one of many wooden taxidermy mounts. The stag’s eyes bore into the viewer, eerie and insistent. The yarn fur’s soft texture evokes memories of a toy plush, an insinuation at odds with the sculpture’s allusion to trophy hunting.
Another one of Tse’s works, “Frog Splayed,” is a hanging acrylic yarn rug depicting a weeping frog. At first glance, it is easy to miss the tears iconic to Tse’s art — the viewer’s eye is automatically drawn to the amphibian’s glaring red stomach. With its torso cut and organs turned out, the frog is dissected and trapped, a momentary pain captured in an eternal flow of tears.
In contrast to the soft lines of Tse’s work, Bergen’s trio of decapitated animal heads spring from wooden taxidermy mounts on the wall. A stag head in the middle looks at the viewer with wild and malformed eyes, its tongue lolling out with an offering: a single Hostess cupcake. Next to the stag is Bergen’s “Aftermath,” a papier-mache bear head painted with brusque brushstrokes. The bear gloats over a burning circus tent resting on its tongue, preparing to devour its captor.
Past “Aftermath,” Bergen’s layered paper collage, “We Don’t Need Another Hero (Sandwich),” is an intricate depiction of greed. A monkey standing on two legs is about to gorge itself on a hamburger, holding a sandwich almost the length of its body in its other hand. Mice and chihuahuas reach for their share of the monkey’s food, despite the plethora of junk food laying at their feet. As the gluttonous animals scramble for purchase on its fur, the monkey’s distraught eyes bulge, mouth open wide in a silent wail.
Bergen and Tse’s work entreats the viewer to reflect on themselves through the eyes of the natural world. To experience the soul-searching gazes of their art, “Game Night” is on exhibition until April 27 with free entry. MAG Galleries will host an artist talk with Bergen and Tse on April 19.
