Simon Berger (born April 9, 1976) is a contemporary glass artist recognized for his groundbreaking technique and mastery in working with glass. Born near Bern, the capital of Switzerland, he continues to live and work there. He was trained as a carpenter, which greatly influenced his understanding and manipulation of materials.
The Broken Window Theory
Contemporary glass artist Simon Berger speaks a singular plastic language by exploring the depth of his material, the glass that he pounds, or cracks with a hammer. The window becomes the support of an expansion done by impacts playing with transparency. The closer and briefer the blows, the stronger the contrasts and the shades. In his hands, the hammer is not a tool of destruction, but rather an amplifier of effects. His lacerated portraits, sculpted in glass, bring the gaze into the intricacies of transparent wounds that he calls “morphogenesis”. A pioneer of this technic, his broken pieces evoke his fascination for faces, especially women’s. With his work on window panes, the artist takes ownership of reality, and probes the expressive copabilities of inert materials destined for factories. His metallic paintings become canvases where perceptions confront with interpretations.
Simon Berger began his artistic explorations with spray can before turning to other mediums. A carpenter by training, his natural attraction to wood inspired him his first creations out of the street. A lover of mechanics, he also spent plenty of time working on car carcasses. It was while pondering about what to do with a car windshield that his art was born. “Human faces have always fascinated me”, explained Simon. “On safety glass, these motifs come into their own and magically attract visitors. It is a discovery from abstract fogging to figurative perception.”
A compulsive explorer of materials, he has also sculpted hyper realistic anamorphism of colored faces using the suspenders of Jeans and T-Shirts, or skulls with the remains of a washed-out ceiling… His art shakes up the interpretation of reality and his esthetics put an interesting spin on the “broken window” theory.