PROCESS

Process

At the core of Berger's process are laminated safety glass and controlled impact.

Origins

Berger began with portraits painted with spray cans. A carpenter by training, he made his first works in wood and later built assemblages from car bodies. In 2016, dissatisfied with his own work after an exhibition in Berlin, he looked for a new direction and remembered the cracks he had seen years earlier while installing conservatory glass. His first attempts on a car windscreen succeeded surprisingly quickly. From them emerged his technique of controlled impact.

01 — Impact

Each strike changes the material. Force, position and density decide how the fractures spread through the pane. Open areas keep the transparency of the glass; concentrated fractures catch the light and build the strongest tones. Laminated safety glass holds together as it cracks, so the image can grow blow by blow. Each decision becomes part of the final structure.

02 — Image

Up close, the work reads as impact points, radiating cracks and overlapping lines. As the viewer steps back, the fractures organise themselves into form: faces, gestures, figures. Berger builds tone through density.

03 — Light

Light changes the work. Glass reflects and transmits it, and the fractures catch it on their edges. Daylight, artificial light and the surrounding room produce different readings of the same piece, and the viewer's own movement becomes part of the experience.

04 — Space

Over the years, the glass has moved away from the wall. Works are layered, suspended, mirrored, tinted in the colours of a place, assembled into sculptural structures or integrated into architecture. At this scale, the work becomes something to approach, walk around and experience with the space.

05 — Live

In museums and cultural institutions, Berger creates works in front of an audience, blow by blow, until the image becomes visible in the glass — among them at the Fondation Pierre Gianadda in Martigny and, most recently, at the National Gallery of Bosnia and Herzegovina in Sarajevo. Live, the process shows the moment in which a field of fractures becomes an image.

  • A man is examining and signing a vinyl record sleeve in a woodworking workshop.
  • Person working on a glass project using a pair of pliers, with various tools and materials on a wooden workbench.
  • A man with glasses on his head, wearing a black t-shirt, working with glass in a workshop. Shelves with tools and supplies are in the background.
  • A storage area with glass panels, metal parts, and wooden pieces stacked against a brick wall in a workshop or construction site.
  • A man with dark hair and a beard, wearing a dark gray T-shirt, standing indoors near a white cabinet in a room with wooden ceiling panels.
  • A man working with a long black pipe in a workshop or garage.
  • A man working in a woodworking shop, using a power sander on a large glass piece, supported by a wooden table.
  • A man in a woodworking shop holding a yellow cordless drill, surrounded by woodworking tools and material, with workbenches and shelves filled with supplies.
  • A man working in a woodworking shop, marking measurements on a large piece of glass with a black marker.
  • A man with dark hair and a beard, wearing a black T-shirt and black pants, is bending over, inspecting shattered glass on a piece of black material indoors with graffiti on the walls.
  • A person wearing yellow ear protection and a dark shirt is kneeling on the ground next to a large, flat glass surface that is shattered into many pieces, with the person holding a small hammer.
  • Man working on glass sculpture at a cluttered woodworking table in an art studio.
  • A man kneels on the ground painting graffiti art on a large wooden wall, featuring a stylized woman with dark hair and mask, a mouse holding a gun, and a futuristic spaceship design.
  • A man working in an indoor art studio with colorful graffiti murals on the wall and various art supplies on a table.
  • A man wearing a dark t-shirt and sunglasses kneels on the ground using a hammer to break a glass panel placed on a mat in an indoor skatepark with graffiti art on the wall.