Simon Berger (artist) - Misplaced Pages

Swiss artist (born 1976)

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S.Simon Berger

Born	9 April 1976 (1976-04-09) (age 48) Herzogenbuchsee, Switzerland
Nationality	Swiss
Known for	Contemporary Art Installations, Contemporary Glass Art
Notable work	Portrait of Kamala Harris WeAreUnbreakable Shattering Beauty, Museo del Vetro Murano
Movement	Pop Art / Contemporary Art
Website	www.simonberger.art

Simon Berger, born in 1976, is a Swiss contemporary visual artist. He is best known for pioneering the art made by breaking glass with a hammer. His work has been widely exhibited around the world.

Life

Simon Berger was born on April 9, 1976. He grew up in Herzogenbuchsee, a municipality in the Oberaargau administrative district in the canton of Bern in Switzerland. Berger got professional education as a carpenter. He currently resides and works in his own studio in Niederönz.

About Bergers work

Simon Berger's glass portraits visualize a tension between strength and fragility through its motif, as well as his handling of the glass. The anonymous female portraits commonly share a powerful expression, their fierce gazes either piercing through the viewer, or fixating on an object beyond the frame. When approaching the artworks closely, these captivating images disintegrate into an amalgamation of cracks and jagged-edged shards of glass. Contrary to expectations of how glass should be handled cautiously to ensure its integrity, Berger makes use of the material's brittleness to develop his artistic language.

Reminiscent of sculptural techniques, a hammer is used to imprint the highlighted facial features into the sheet of glass. An initially transparent support of the image, the pane of glass, becomes partially opaque. The controlled shattering of the glass creates fractures which are subject to the material's physical laws. However, instead of collapsing into itself, the safety glass keeps the shards in place. These artworks fascinate by juxtaposing strength with fragility and expectations towards glass with Berger's approach to the material. The incidence of light is reflected by the fragments and cracks within the glass, making the artworks surface gleam and glisten and depending on the illumination, it seems as if the portrait itself were glowing. Through destruction, Simon Berger allows beauty to emerge.

According to the magazine French magazine RTS, Berger's work was influenced by the pop art movement and Neorealism.

Simon Berger made his first works on glass in 2017, in his studio in Niederönz, Switzerland. Soon, the originality of his technique put him in the media spotlight, and he was invited by many institutions or events such as the largest street art festival in Europe, the Street Art Fest Grenoble-Alpes, where he created a live diptych. The work can be seen in Grenoble at 113 cours Berriat in a window provided by the ARaymond company. In March 2021, Simon Berger created a portrait of Kamala Harris, the Vice President of the United States, in partnership with the American National Museum of Women's History. In August 2021, he was associated with the "We are Unbreakable" project, sponsored by MTV Lebanon in tribute to the victims of the Beirut harbour explosion in 2020.

Exhibitions (Selection)

Selected Solo Exhibitions:

2023 - Solo Exhibition, Facing Grace, Museo Civico di Treviso, Treviso, Italy
2023 - Solo Exhibition, Echoes, Fabien Castanier Gallery, Miami, United States
2023 - Solo Exhibition, Beauty in Destruction, West Chelsea Contemporary, Austin, United States
2023 - Solo Exhibition, Morphogenesis, Bundesverwaltungsgericht, St. Gallen, Switzerland
2023 - Solo Exhibition, Reflected Identities, Gallotti & Radice, Milano, Italy
2023 - Solo Exhibition and private event, Untitled, Agence DS and Icone Gallery, Le Touquet-Paris-Plage, France
2023 - Solo Exhibition, The Doors of Perception, Museo Civico di Sansepolcro, Italy
2023 - Solo Exhibition, Shattering Beauty (curated by Sandrine Welte and Chiara Squarcina, in Collaboration with Berengo Studio), Museo del Vetro, Murano, Italy
2022 - Solo Exhibition, Shattered, Aurum Gallery, Bangkok, Thailand
2022 - Solo Exhibition, Unbreakable Identities, Galotti & Radice, Italy
2022 - Solo Exhibition, Agence DS, Paris, France
2022 - Solo Exhibition, Artstübli Basel, Switzerland
2022 - Solo Exhibition, Le verre dans tous ses éclats, Vitromusée Romont, Switzerland
2022 - Solo Exhibition, Cracked Beauties, Mazel Galerie, Brussel, Belgium
2021 - Solo Exhibition, Simon Berger, Artstübli Gallery, Basel, Switzerland

Selected Art Fairs:

2023 - Laurent Marthaler Contemporary, Montreux, Switzerland, Art Miami 2023
2023 Artstübli Art & Culture, Basel, Switzerland, Volta Art Fair 2022 (Duo Show with Eddie Hara)
2022 - Laurent Marthaler Contemporary, Montreux, Switzerland, Art Miami 2022
2022 - Geneva Biennale, Sculpture Garden, Geneva, Switzerland
2021 - Laurent Marthaler Contemporary, Montreux, Switzerland, Art Miami 2021

Selected Group Exhibitions:

2022 - Duo Show, reFORMATION (with Pierre-Alain Münger), Frankonian Museum, Feuchtwangen, Germany
2022 - Group Exhibition, Glasstress, Fondazione Berengo, Venice, Italy
2022 - Duo Show, Defekt (with Pierre-Alain Münger), Artstübli Gallery, Basel, Switzerland
2022 - Group Exhibition, Sculpture Garden, Biennal Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland
2022 - Group Exhibition, MAMCO (Musée d’art moderne et contemporain), Geneva, Switzerland
2022 - Spring Break, Mazel Galerie, Brussels, Belgium
2022 - Glasstress - State of Mind, Fondazione Berengo, Murano, Venice, Italy (curated by Adriano Berengo, Koen Vanmechelen, Ludovico Pratesi)
2022 - L’Ancien Musée de Peinture, Grenoble, France
2022 - Break that wall, Mazel Galerie, Brussel, Belgium

Selected Public Installations:

2023 - Tosca, Municipality of Paris and Agence DS, Paris, France
2023 - Réflexion Cristalline, La Villa Calvi and Agence DS, Corsica, France
2022 - Transformation, Artstübli Art & Culture, Basel, Switzerland
2022 - L’espoir, Street Art Festival Grenoble (curated by Jerome Catz), Permanent Installation, Grenoble, France
2022 - Untitled (front window), Spacejunk, Grenoble, France
2022 - Serpenti, BVLGARI, Zürich, Switzerland, curated by Florian Paul Koenig
2022 - Broken Lives, Ministry of Traffic Safety of France, Paris, France, curated by Laurent Marthaler, Laurent Marthaler Contemporary
2022 - Kamala Harris, Abraham Lincoln Memorial, United States, curated by Philipp Brogli, Artstübli
2021 - We are Unbreakable, MTV Lebanon, Beirut, Lebanon, curated by Laurent Marthaler (2021)
2021 - Untitled, Golf Court Ätigkofen, Switzerland
2020 - Abribus, Geneva, Switzerland, curated by Jean-Damien Zacchariotto
2020 - Untitled, Genevra, Switzerland, Promenade du Lac, curated by Jean-Damien Zacchariotto
2020 - Untitled (front window), Artstübli Gallery, Basel, Switzerland
2016 - E=mc2, Motorex, Langenthal, Switzerland

Works in public and private collections

Museo Civico di Sansepolcro, Sansepolcro, Italy
Museo del Vetro, Murano, Italy
Beit Beirut museum, Lebanon
National Museum of Women's History in Washington, D.C., USA, "Portrait of Kamala Harris"
Murten Museum, Switzerland
Frankonian Museum, Feuchtwangen, Germany
Vitromusée Romont, Switzerland
Jessica Goldman Collection, Miami, USA
Foundation Dr. Hanspeter & Christine Rentsch, Grenchen, Switzerland
NOA Collection, Lucerne, Switzerland

References

^ "A new Kamala Harris portrait celebrates the vice president as a glass ceiling breaker". Business Insider.
"100 art-world Instagram accounts to follow right now — Simon Berger (#4)". Christie's.
"Victims Portraits Etched in Glass in Call for Justice". CNN.
"??". 9 January 2023.
^ "With his hammer, Simon Berger sculpts faces out of broken glass (In French: "Avec son marteau, Simon Berger sculpte des visages en verre brisé)". RTS Culture. 28 May 2020.
"What is otherwise vandalism becomes art with him (Translation from German): "Was sonst Vandalismus ist, wird bei ihm Kunst"". Berner Zeitung. 3 February 2020.
^ "Simon Berger - The Broken Window Theory". The artist's official website.
^ "SIMON BERGER ART". simonberger (in German). Retrieved 2023-03-17.
"« We Are Unbreakable" : portraits des victimes en verre brisé". L'Orient-Le Jour. 2021-08-05. Retrieved 2021-12-02.

Life

About Bergers work

Exhibitions (Selection)

Works in public and private collections

References

Further reading