artist/ Simon Berger

Suisse

Born in Switzerland on 9 April 1976.
Lives and works in his own studio in Niederönz.

Artistic vision, technical skill and continuous innovation are the hallmarks of Simon Berger’s creative practice. A pioneer of an unlikely method of working with glass in a two-dimensional and figurative way, the Swiss artist literally breaks boundaries with a revolutionary approach to his preferred medium, going beyond the centuries-old convention of constructing and modelling vitreous matter. Contrary to this long-standing tradition, this is a form of anti-creation, since the destructive gesture of simple hammer blows on a pane of glass ends up ‘drawing’ images of great visual intrigue that emerge from the tangle of powerfully orchestrated cracks.

The closer and shorter the blows, the stronger the contrasts and nuances. In his hands, the hammer is no longer a tool of destruction, but rather an amplifier of effects. His lacerated portraits, incised into the glass, transport the eye into the tangles of cracks and folds that he describes as ‘morphogenesis’.
From the controlled shattering of glass and the resulting fractures, art recalls its power to amaze and awe, as through destruction Simon Berger allows beauty to emerge.

With the tip of his hammer, the Swiss artist reinvents urban art by creating works on glass, his favourite material. Each creation sometimes requires hundreds or even thousands of hammer blows. Today, he is the first artist to use this technique on glass. These are abstract forms that require you to stand back and take in the fog of brilliance. It’s a play on light, transparency and precision, to remind the public of their own fragility and encourage them to rethink their very existence. Since 2018, Simon Berger has been attracting the interest of international collectors, art foundations, iconic brands and major museums.

Simon Berger began his artistic explorations by painting portraits with spray cans before turning to other media. Trained as a carpenter, his first sculptural creations were the result of a natural attraction to wood. Attracted by different materials and their respective mediums, and fostering a fascination for discarded objects, the artist spent a lot of time working with second-hand car bodies to create assemblages.

The idea of working with glass was born as he pondered what to do with a car windscreen. After his first attempts, he gradually perfected his unique technique of ‘incising’ the images with a hammer, turning the material’s weakness – its fragility and risk of breakage – into its greatest strength.

The closer and shorter the blows, the stronger the contrasts and nuances. In his hands, the hammer is no longer a tool of destruction, but rather an amplifier of effects. His lacerated portraits, incised into the glass, transport the eye into the tangles of cracks and folds that he describes as ‘morphogenesis’.

With his unique sculptural language, Simon Berger explores the depths of the material, striking the glass to free the photorealistic ‘paintings’ from the presumed flatness of the surface. In this respect, the glass canvas is both the support structure for his work and the visualisation of his artistic writing, while its transparency allows the artist to play with notions of an infinite beyond that takes concrete form in the opacity of the breaks.

From the controlled shattering of glass and the resulting fractures, art recalls its power to amaze and awe, as through destruction Simon Berger allows beauty to emerge.

‘Human faces have always fascinated me,’ explains Simon Berger of his main choice of subject. ‘On safety glass, they take on their full meaning and draw the viewer in as if by magic. It’s a process of discovery, from abstract fog to figurative perception. With their exceptional photo-realistic allure, these portraits fascinate with their expressiveness, as if animated from within and resonating with life. With his work, the artist pushes back the boundaries of creation and probes the expressive capacities of inert materials destined for factories.

Following a solo exhibition at the Museum of Glass 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 Municipal Museum in Sansepolcro, and more recently following the revelation of his monumental work ‘Tosca’ installed on the Place de l’Opéra Comique in Paris, he unveiled his reinterpretation of the emblematic opera singer by Giacomo Puccini.