SHATTERING BEAUTY

Museo del Vetro, Murano, IT
28 January – 7 May 2023
Solo Exhibition, curated by Sandrine Welte and Chiara Squarcina. In collaboration with the Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia and Berengo Studio

Murano has shaped glass for centuries, and the Museo del Vetro tells that story. Shattering Beauty was Simon Berger's first solo exhibition on the island and one of his largest institutional exhibitions. He conceived it in response to the place, its history and its material.

Around twenty new works came together as a single installation. The glass panels were set at different angles into metal cubes of varying sizes, alternating with mirrors. As visitors moved through the rooms, portraits appeared, disappeared and came together again.

Some of the panels were tinted turquoise. Together with the shimmering surfaces of the glass, they recall the canals and the lagoon around the city. The lion, symbol of Venice, links the works to the city's long history. Berger also drew a parallel between the face and the mask, a nod to carnival and its play of hiding and revealing.

On an island where glass has been handled with care for centuries, Berger worked with the moment it breaks. He calls this approach morphogenesis: new form emerging through force. The exhibition paid tribute to this tradition and showed how much the material still holds in store.

It also marked a turning point in how he exhibits: from then on, the places where he showed his work increasingly became part of the work itself, in exhibitions conceived as site-specific interventions.

Credits

Museo del Vetro, Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia, Berengo Studio

Photography: © Joerg Haefeli, © Francesco Allegretto