SIMON BERGER
SIMON BERGER
Simon Berger Simon Berger lives and works in Niederönz, Switzerland
Having devised a revolutionary technique of working glass, Simon Berger proposes a new portraiture in his medium of choice by carving images of great allure from the depth of his vitreous canvases. Against traditional modes of sculpting in three-dimensional ways, his is a ‘painterly‘ gesture that harnesses the affordances of the brittle material in a reversal of long- standing modi operandi. Through bold strokes of a hammer on the glass surface, Simon Berger turns the destructive force of his tool into an amplifier of effects as the resultant cracks and creases form into faces whose piercing expression resonates with the impactful process of ‘morphogenesis‘ as the artist himself refers to his creative ordeal. A sort of anti-creation that speaks to a unique artistic vision Simon Berger has refined over the course of years.
Contrary to expectations of how glass should be handled, Simon Berger exploits its fragility and transparence, constantly pushing its limits against the physical laws of the material - a demonstration of the improbable which ultimately allows for beauty to emerge. Creative intuition, technical skill and continuous innovation characterise Simon Berger‘s practice which probes the expressive capabilities of an inert material commonly destined for factories. His vitreous paintings challenge habits of seeing as the glass canvases become sites where visual perception is held in constant suspense by the deconstructing and reconstructing image. Glass, the most capricious of all media for artistic expression, acts as a place where the force of a unique sculptural gesture translates into depictions of mesmerising appeal. Of exceptional photorealistic allure, these portraits enthral for their expressiveness, as if animated from within and resonating with life.
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“Human faces have always fascinated me“ - Simon Berger asserts. It is this fascination with the face - the canvas of the soul - that lies at the heart of his artistic research which he translates into mesmerising portraits of great allure. Their power thereby resides not only in the expressive force of the sitter‘s eyes but moreover the artist’s material of choice. Glass, one of the hitherto undervalued media for creative endeavours, serves iwith its rich semantics as a starting point for a portraiture of unprecedented kind. The cracks and creases Simon Berger drives into the surface of his vitreous material resonate with the force of powerful incursion, thereby creating an echo that reverberates through the final image he carves and utlimately liberates from the depth of the glass pane. In its dichotomous nature - liquid and solid, transparent and opaque, fragile and strong - glass acts as an animated support for a new hyperrealistic portraiture. A material that lends itself to a double modality of being looked both at and through, it affords a subtle play with and allusion to the innumerable facets that constitute the human psyche and mind. Deemed one of the greatest - for impenetrable and hence unresolved - mysteries, the human condition is revealed in its fragile strength through the artist who virtuously exploits the transparency of the glass pane by daring a glance ‘beyond painting‘. The human face, the most elaborate of all masks, emerges inadvertently in a form of anticreation, coming into being through the shattering stroke of Simon Berger‘s bold artistic gesture. By this revolutionary creative act, modes of seeing and perceiving are questioned as the image constantly hovers between disintegration and reconstitution, intrinsically bound to the viewer‘s perspective. The perceptual challenge Simon Berger confronts the beholder with proves integral to his work, a reversal of common habits of looking rooted in a tradition of the ‘static‘ picture. Instead, his are portraits whose dynamic nature speaks to an aesthetic phenomenology in the perception of art that lives by the concrete, physical experience of the glass canvas. “The artwork is present“, the (new) adage goes. A presence whose seductive force intimately ties beholder to beheld as the vitreous surface turns into a mirror for the viewer to project themselves.
Text by Sandrine Welte
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Books
With this publication, we take a look back at the development of Simon Berger's art. Over the last few years, Simon Berger has developed into a pioneer of art with glass and has presented his works worldwide in solo and group exhibitions.
This edition of 70 pieces will be personally signed and numbered by Simon Berger.
— 216 pages
— Dimension: 30/22 cm
— Price incl. Shipping within Switzerland and Europe, for all other countries we have to charge USD 25 for shipping
— Price excl. import taxes to your country
Signed Edition
— Limited Edition of 70
— Each copy is signed and numbered by Simon Berger
— USD 350 incl. shipping to Switzerland and Europe
— USD 25 additionally for shipping to all other countries
Regular Book
— Unlimited Edition
— USD 150 incl. shipping to Switzerland and Europe
— USD 25 additionally for shipping to all other countries
Selected Press Articles
“Das Spiel mit der Zerbrechlichkeit”, Schweizer Illustrierte, 25.07.2024, by Manuela Donati
Read an article about Simon Berger’s works at Volta Basel 2024:
Venice's magician of glass art, Documentary about Adriano Berengo with interviews by the artists Laure Prouvost, Ai Weiwei, Koen Vanmechelen, Simon Berger, Chila Kumari Burman and Javier Pérez.
By Eike Schmitz for Arte TV
Exhibitions
Casarsa Della Delizia — A Matter of Metamorphosis
Solo exhibition
15 January — 22 February 2025
Exhibition hall at the municipality of Casarsa della Delizia, Pordenone, Italy
In collaboration with Cris Contini Conteporary
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Curated by Sandrine Welte and Pasquale Lettieri
On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of Pier Paolo Pasolini's death, Casarsa della Delizia (PN) - the birthplace of his mother, where the great poet, writer, and filmmaker spent formative years of his poetic inspiration and where he is buried - becomes a stage for contemporary art in his honor, while also paying tribute to another great European author, Franz Kafka.
Curated by Sandrine Welte and Pasquale Lettieri and coordinated by project manager Sandra Sanson, "A Matter of Metamorphosis" is part of the cultural project 'TrasformARTI: Art as a Tool to Imagine the Future', which explores themes of change and metamorphosis in society. Simon Berger's works establish a dialogue between past and present, inviting reflection on the human condition and the world around us. His pieces also touch on themes of solitude and alienation, central to Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis. Through his unique technique of working with glass, Berger captures the existential fracture and sense of disconnection that permeate Kafka's narrative, evoking in the viewer an inner conflict and estrangement that define the human experience.
The "A Matter of Metamorphosis" installation is conceived as a journey where the audience engages with themes of transformation, isolation, and hope. At the heart of the exhibition, an immersive setting combines technological devices with freestanding glass panels, creating a powerful visual and emotional experience.
The exhibition project is organized by the Municipality of Casarsa della Delizia with the support of the Autonomous Region of Friuli Venezia Giulia, in collaboration with Cris Contini Contemporary, the Pier Paolo Pasolini Study Center in Casarsa, Pro Casarsa della Delizia APS, Contemporary&Co, and the Enrico Galvani State Art High School.
©Jessica Zufferli
Church of the Artists — Between Mother and Son
Solo Exhibition
15 January — 22 February 2025
Church of the Artists, Rome, Italy
In collaboration with Cris Contini Contemporary
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For centuries, artists have been fascinated by the Sublime.
Stemming from the Latin ‘sublimus,’ meaning ‘uplifted’ or ‘high,’ the Sublime is a philosophical approach and state of mind that describes a quality of such greatness, be it spiritual, physical, aesthetic, or moral that our ability to perceive or comprehend it is temporarily overwhelmed by a sense of wonder and impermanence of the universe.
What is the sensation we feel while interacting with nature when words fail and we find ourselves awed beyond reason? How does an artist convey the indescribable and translate the metaphysical into the material? With her unique curatorial vision, artist Ambika Hinduja Macker, founder and creative director of the art and design firm Impeccable Imagination, explores these questions through a reimagining of her 2022 immersive art experience, The Sublime Nature of Being. In collaboration with ICD Brookfield Place, she invites viewers to engage emotionally, imaginative and sensorially, embracing the universal human experience of awe and reverence inspired by nature.
Featuring innovative works by an acclaimed roster of internationally renowned contemporary artists, this sequel celebrates the profound interplay between the elements, Water, Fire, Earth, Air, and Spirit, to bathe participants in an immersive world that transcends the physical realm. Embark on a multi-sensory journey, where the fluid grace of water rejuvenates the soul, fire ignites passion and the strength of the earth grounds you. Feel and inhale the lightness of the air as it embodies freedom and inspiration. Allow the essence of spirit, weaving through each element, to resonate with the deepest part of your being, reminding you of the humbling purity of the cosmos and the interconnectedness of all life. Embracing the modern interpretation of the Japanese term ‘Ukiyo,’ meaning to live in the moment, detached from the concerns of life, The Sublime Nature of Being guides the audience on a unique journey in search of a higher truth conjured through the magic of creativity. Be transported to a sanctuary of tranquil beauty, a temporary reprieve and poetic antidote to the external chaos of the present day.
Described by the curator as an ‘Alchemic Sonic Environment,’ The Sublime Nature of Being features sculptures, drawings and paintings, three dimensional installations, sound and scent, a play on time and space, contrasts of light and shadow, elemental materials and fluid forms, intertwining aesthetics and ethics, anchoring the healing power of nature at the heart of lived experience.
Text by: Impeccable Imagination
©Anna Toffanello
Impeccable Imagination — The Sublime Nature of Being
Group Exhibition at ICD Brookfield, Dubai
15 January — 22 February 2025
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For centuries, artists have been fascinated by the Sublime.
Stemming from the Latin ‘sublimus,’ meaning ‘uplifted’ or ‘high,’ the Sublime is a philosophical approach and state of mind that describes a quality of such greatness, be it spiritual, physical, aesthetic, or moral that our ability to perceive or comprehend it is temporarily overwhelmed by a sense of wonder and impermanence of the universe.
What is the sensation we feel while interacting with nature when words fail and we find ourselves awed beyond reason? How does an artist convey the indescribable and translate the metaphysical into the material? With her unique curatorial vision, artist Ambika Hinduja Macker, founder and creative director of the art and design firm Impeccable Imagination, explores these questions through a reimagining of her 2022 immersive art experience, The Sublime Nature of Being. In collaboration with ICD Brookfield Place, she invites viewers to engage emotionally, imaginative and sensorially, embracing the universal human experience of awe and reverence inspired by nature.
Featuring innovative works by an acclaimed roster of internationally renowned contemporary artists, this sequel celebrates the profound interplay between the elements, Water, Fire, Earth, Air, and Spirit, to bathe participants in an immersive world that transcends the physical realm. Embark on a multi-sensory journey, where the fluid grace of water rejuvenates the soul, fire ignites passion and the strength of the earth grounds you. Feel and inhale the lightness of the air as it embodies freedom and inspiration. Allow the essence of spirit, weaving through each element, to resonate with the deepest part of your being, reminding you of the humbling purity of the cosmos and the interconnectedness of all life. Embracing the modern interpretation of the Japanese term ‘Ukiyo,’ meaning to live in the moment, detached from the concerns of life, The Sublime Nature of Being guides the audience on a unique journey in search of a higher truth conjured through the magic of creativity. Be transported to a sanctuary of tranquil beauty, a temporary reprieve and poetic antidote to the external chaos of the present day.
Described by the curator as an ‘Alchemic Sonic Environment,’ The Sublime Nature of Being features sculptures, drawings and paintings, three dimensional installations, sound and scent, a play on time and space, contrasts of light and shadow, elemental materials and fluid forms, intertwining aesthetics and ethics, anchoring the healing power of nature at the heart of lived experience.
Text by: Impeccable Imagination
©Impeccable Imagination
Solo Exhibition — Monuments — Underdogs Gallery
Solo Exhibition at Underdogs Gallery
15 November 2024 —28 December 2024
Lisbon, Portugal
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Underdogs presents Monuments, Simon Berger’s first exhibition in Portugal, on view from 15 November to 28 December. Through a new body of work, the renowned Swiss artist — who once dreamed of becoming an architect — pays tribute to the work and vision of some of the most prominent figures in modern and contemporary architecture, such as Jean Nouvel, Peter Zumthor, Mies van der Rohe, and Zaha Hadid, among others. Demonstrating his passion for this discipline, Berger uses these new works to highlight the importance of the contributions made by these pivotal figures, who revolutionised the field of architecture and who have also been a major source of inspiration for him. To mark the opening on 15 November, Simon Berger will do a live performance in the gallery space, while on 13 November, the artist will launch a signed, limited edition exploring a new technique.
Following the launch of a limited edition earlier this year dedicated to the iconic architect and urban planner Le Corbusier, this exhibition takes Simon Berger’s collaboration with Underdogs to new depths. Featuring a total of 17 works, Monuments weaves a surprising narrative about architecture, merging light, aesthetics, and functionality. Three pieces are installations composed of glass bricks, evoking the grandeur of classical structures. Through forms that rise in blocks of glass sculpted with high-pressure sandblasting, Berger offers a perspective on these celebrated architects: their legacy goes beyond the built they have left us. Monuments reflects Simon Berger’s early ambition to become an architect, which led him to train as a carpenter, a path that has shaped his entire artistic practice. Berger developed a singular technique of working glass, in which “anti-creation” – the destructive process of his tools – originates photorealistic figures. Light and fracture interact dynamically in a process the artist calls “morphogenesis”, now revealed in a new and unexpected way.
Text by: Underdogs Gallery, Lisbon, Portugal
©Mike Doorline
©Bruno Lopes
Atelier Richelieu — Reverberation
Solo Exhibition
7 November 2024 —11 November 2024
With Agence DS in Paris, France
Agence DS, Icone Gallery and NOA contemproary are delighted to announce that Simon Berger’s next solo exhibition will be held at the Atelier Richelieu from November 7 to 10. In this historic 700 m2 Parisian venue, which has hosted such emblematic events as Paris Photo and Drawing Now, Simon Berger will pay a powerful tribute to Richard Serra with monumental cylindrical sculptures. At the same time, he will devote part of his work to the Olympic Games, with striking portraits of the Olympian gods. Visitors will also be able to rediscover the female faces for which he is renowned, sublimated by the thousand fractures of his hammer.
©David Beyonder
Laurent Marthaler Contemporary — Lasting Moment
Duo exhibition with Pierre-Alain Münger
27 June — 15 September 2024
Montreux, Switzerland
Lasting Moment was an exhibition that brought together the works of Simon Berger and Pierre-Alain Münger, unified by a striking black-and-white theme. The show explored the elemental power of light, whether through Berger's shattered glass that captures light or Münger's deformed metal plates that reflect it. Berger and Münger, long-time acquaintances, share a fascination with power, force, and the impact of their mediums. In their works, they intentionally use force, balancing control and pressure to shape their materials—glass for Berger and metal for Münger. Their shared approach resulted in a collection that speaks to the power of impact, highlighting the contrast between destruction and the delicate nature of life. For Berger, glass perfectly represents the themes of strength and fragility. He used shards to depict the chaos following a violent event, such as a car crash, illustrating the vulnerability of life disrupted by trauma. The collaboration between Berger and Münger emphasizes their joint exploration of force and fragility, offering a powerful narrative through their combined vision and techniques.
©Joerg Haefeli
Fondazione Berengo — Glasstress 8 1/2
Group Exhibition
19 April — November 2024
Fondazione Berengo Art Space, Murano, and Tesa 99, Venice, Italy
Curated by Umberto Croppi
There is a place where the great artists of the world have passed through in recent decades to measure their creativity with a material steeped in history and seduction:glass. This place is Murano, the island in the Venetian lagoon that has made glassmaking its identity. It is on this remnant of land that their art has taken shape in a workshop that has dedicated its furnaces and the work of its masters to a single purpose, contemporary art. We are of course talking about Berengo Studio.
A vocation that has characterised 35 years of activity, without yielding to the market, and that has characterised the studio from the outset as a partner, culturally and technically equipped to understand and realise the creations conceived by artists.
Artists who enter into a symbiotic relationship with glass masters, creating an exchange of knowledge, ideas, and manual skills, indispensable ingredients to perform the magic of transforming an inert material into the form conceived by the author.
From experience to research, through a foundation that makes its work an accumulation of knowledge available for experimentation and a tool for dissemination, the Fondazione Berengo is in fact also the organiser of events and exhibitions in important museum institutions around the world, together with their own space that houses, on site in Murano, the most significant elements of a constantly evolving production.
Moreover, for the past 16 years, this path has been accompanied by a biennial exhibition in Venice, which constitutes a moment of dynamic synthesis of the achievements of the community of artists who gather around the figure of Adriano Berengo.
To celebrate the thirty-fifth year of activity, an “extra” edition has been set up: eight and a half in fact, because it is a large exhibition that is being held in Murano, allowing visitors to understand where the works are born, to enter into direct contact with the ancient but always new experience of the transfiguration of glass into pure art. Yet in addition, a dedicated space in Venice within one of the Arsenale's 'tese', to offer visitors to the Biennale a mirror of the Murano exhibition.
Museo de Arte Moderno Santo Domingo — Group exhibition by Art Fiaci
Group exhibition
2 May — 18 June 2024
Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic
Museo Civici di Treviso Casa Robegan — Facing Grace
Solo Exhibition
In collaboration with Cris Contini Contemporary
15 December 2023 — 11 February 2024
Treviso, Italy
Taking inspiration from Antonio Canova‘s revolutionary artistic work for the exhibition at the Musei Civici di Treviso, Simon Berger endeavours a new take on the complex oeuvre by the Italian sculptor whose importance and value for art continues to resonate today. In consideration of the intricate link between the city of Treviso and Canova’s birthplace in Possagno, Facing Grace engages with Canova‘s unique sculptural idiom by transposing his own aesthetic research into the human form to the repertoire of mythological narrative, studied in great detail by the Neoclassical artist.
The point of departure for the body of works presented thereby becomes Canova’s The Three Graces, an outstanding example of sculptural virtuosity in terms of composition and movement. United in their elegant posture and delicate beauty, the three goddesses are lost in an affectionate embrace as they face each other. Their peaceful balance speaks to their allegorical nature of mirth, youthful beauty and elegance as they altogether appear to exude an air of joyous lightness of being. From their physical appearance as a sculptural group of three, they are translated to a new corporeal shape in lines of cracks and creases through Simon Berger‘s ‘morphogenesis‘-technique.
Engaging with canons of beauty, the Swiss artist creates various installations that revolve around notions of the sublime, allowing for its many faces to appear. Glass, his material of choice, thereby acts as a medium to play with modes of perception, allowing for a both literal and metaphorical deconstruction and synthesis of the underlying mythological accounts. Layers of meaning are thus orchestrated into a comment on ‘facing grace‘ as his two-dimensional sculptural portraits invite a look beyond the surface in a virtual encounter with his vitreous drawings - in search of the beautiful.
Text by: Sandrine Welte
©Jessica Zufferli
City of Paris — Tosca
Public Art Project
In collaboration with Agence DS
28 September 2023 — 28 October 2023
Paris, France
After a solo exhibition at the Museo del Vetro in Murano, the creation of the portrait of Kamala Harris exhibited at the Lincoln Museum in Washington, and a vibrant tribute to the British writer Aldous Huxley at the Museo Municipale in Sansepolcro, it is opposite the Opéra Comique in Paris, one of France's oldest theatrical and musical institutions, that Simon Berger is installing his new creation.
Simon Berger's unique technique consists of multiple hammer blows, directed and controlled, on glass surfaces to sculpt shapes and create striking figures. Inspired by the place given to operatic heroines, the true guardians of the Opéra Comique, Simon Berger wanted to pay tribute to Tosca, one of the most famous and demanding female characters in the Italian opera repertoire. In doing so, he has added a contemporary perspective that complements the two statues in the theatre's main hall, those of Carmen (by Guiraud-Rivière) and Manon (by Mercié).
This sculpture pays tribute to this emblematic character on the very spot where he first appeared in Paris on 13 October 1903, exactly 120 years ago.
It was at the Opéra Comique that the first - and highly controversial - French performance of Giacomo Puccini's Manon took place, recounting the tragic fate of a famous opera singer, mistress of a painter and victim of his passion. Simon Berger's striking sculpture captures the emotional intensity of Tosca, both in the power of her gaze and in her fragility, evoked by the broken glass.
Commenting on his portraits of women in broken glass, Simon Berger says: “The women I sculpt are not only luminous, they are light itself. Immaterial, their features are engraved deep in the glass, whose finesse captures every nuance of their emotions, even the most fleeting, for eternity.”
This open-air exhibition, accessible to all free of charge, is the fruit of a collaboration between Simon Berger and the Mairie de Paris, and confirms the City of Paris' desire to use public spaces to bring art to as many people as possible.
Text by: Agence DS
©Salome Bellin
Museo Civico di Sansepolcro — The Doors of Perception
Solo exhibition
2 July 2023 — 30 September 2023
In Sansepolcro, Italy
Curated by Sandrine Welte and Pasquale Lettieri
Cris Contini Contemporary and Lo Studiolo d'Arte, present THE DOORS OF PERCEPTION, the solo show of Swiss sculptor Simon Berger curated by Sandrine Welte and Prof. Pasquale Lettieri on display at the Civic Museum of Sansepolcro.
In this exhibition sponsored by the Municipality of Sansepolcro and the Department of Culture, Simon Berger embraces the artistic heritage of the city as a starting point for a commentary that develops from a 1925 essay by Aldous Huxley, in which the author describes Piero della Francesca's Resurrection as ‘the greatest painting in the world’, thus saving it from the bombings of World War II. It was later, in his autobiographical account that the English writer reexamined the Renaissance artist’s work with respect to drapery, thereby opening the semantics of contemplation to new modes of seeing. With The Doors of Perception, the Swiss artist undertakes to investigate these very mechanisms of the beholding mind, that solitary universe in which the infinite vagueness of imagination and conception come together.
Through an immersive, box-like installation of glass canvases, the labyrinthine structures of the human intellect are replicated, playing with the illusion of sight and the seduction of the senses.
©Laura Scatena
©Laura Scatena
Museo del Vetro Murano — Shattering Beauty
Solo exhibition
28 January — 7 May 2023
Murano, Italy
The exhibition Simon Berger: Shattering Beauty, organised in collaboration with Berengo Studio at the Museo del Vetro, contains a series of new portraits by the artist in glass, presenting his pioneering technique to the Venetian lagoon for the very first time. In his hyper realistic portraits Berger recreates the lines of the human face by breaking the material. In a mesmerising process he refers to as “morphogenesis,” he re-situates the medium as an animated “canvas,” using sculptural tools such as a hammer to physically work at its surface to “etch” and “draw” haunting human faces. Reinforced safety glass, which holds at its core a crucial layer of plastic, ensures that the material, though broken, stays in place.
This highly controlled sculptural technique originates from the artist’s classical training in carpentry, and is a moving example of how many artists are now translating techniques from other mediums into the world of glass. Berger’s unique technique of deliberate “shattering,” contradicts years of teaching, whereby broken glass has been seen as wasted or ruined. On the contrary, he instead turns the material’s so-called weakness into its most vital asset. Its ability to break becomes reframed as its ability to change, to be altered, and to be recast as something new. To watch the artist create these works is to witness a vivid “performance,” not dissimilar to that of the glass maestros in the furnace. In a way, Berger’s craft provides an enticing extension of tradition, continuing the animated life of glass, into what had previously been viewed as its death.
©Jörg Häfeli
Sculpture Garden Biennale Geneva — Group Exhibition
Group exhibition in Geneva, Switzerland
10 June 2022 — 30 September 2022
Contemporary glass artist Simon Berger speaks a singular visual language as he explores the depths of his material, glass, which he cracks and splits with a hammer. The pane of glass becomes the support for an expansion achieved by impacts that play with transparency. The closer and shorter the blows, the stronger the contrasts and nuances. In his hands, the hammer is not a tool of destruction, but rather an amplifier of effects. Berger began his artistic explorations with aerosol cans before turning to other media. Trained as a carpenter, his natural attraction to wood inspired his first urban art creations. A keen mechanic, he also spent a lot of time working on crashed vehicles. It was while thinking about what to do with a car windscreen that his art was born. "Human faces have always fascinated me," explains Simon. "On safety glass, these patterns seem to come to life and attract visitors as if by magic. It's a discovery, where abstract mist meets figurative perception.