Simon Berger. Shattering Beauty

After the great success of Tony Cragg's solo exhibition, the Murano Glass Museum (VE) is ready to welcome another major exhibition. From 28 January 2023 to 7 May 2023 the museum spaces of Fondamenta Marco Giustinian 8 will host Shattering Beauty, a solo show by Simon Berger, a Swiss artist famous throughout the world for his portraits engraved in glass.
The exhibition, curated by Sandrine Welte and Chiara Squarcina in collaboration with the Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia and Berengo Studio, is conceived as an immersive installation and presents about twenty works, all unpublished, which explore the fragility of the human condition through the hypnotic and innovative sculptural practice of the artist. Contrary to the tradition of blown or shaped glass, in fact, Simon Berger's sculptural gesture recalls the act of engraving and sculpting on the glass surface.
It is an alternative approach to the glass portrait, which the artist himself defines as "morphogenesis", and which manages to enhance the unlimited expressive possibilities of this secular material that is still too little explored.
Berger's is an artistic investigation that tests glass by pushing it to its limit, until it breaks: the brushstrokes become hammer blows on a glass plate, causing cracks and breaks in the facial features.
The application of this technique brings with it a fundamental inversion of meaning that releases new meanings: the shattering of the glass, which could resonate as an act of destruction, a form of anti-creation, is the privileged means to free the most pure beauty from the depths of matter.
In the hands of Simon Berger, the hammer is no longer a simple tool, but becomes an effects amplifier. The light and transparency of the glass surface are transformed into an intricate network of cracks and fractures that recreate the human face.
For Shattering Beauty, in addition to a selection of glass portraits - alternating with mirrors - which challenge the modalities of perception, various "animated" canvases inserted in metal cubes will also be presented, inviting one to interact with the installation.
These are works that require close attention from the visitor. They ask to be looked at from different perspectives, while unfolding their enigmatic charm.

SIMON BERGER was born on April 9, 1976 in Switzerland.
During his carpentry training in his youth he develops a great interest in different materials, such as wood and metal. Also active as a street artist, working on some car carcasses, he discovers that the metal of the windshield, and subsequently the glass, are interesting materials for new artistic explorations with hammer blows.
The originality of his technique was soon met with growing interest and invitations from institutions, galleries and festivals around the world followed.
Most recent projects have seen the creation of portraits of Kamala Harris and Kemal Atatürk, while several glass canvases for the 'We are Unbreakable' initiative paid tribute to the victims of the Beirut port explosion in 2020.
From the two-dimensional format of his glass portraits, Simon Berger has recently switched to the three-dimensional one of sculpture, further exploring the potential of the chosen medium.