Summarize this article with:
Simon Berger doesn’t paint portraits. He shatters them into existence.
The Swiss contemporary artist wields a hammer instead of a brush, striking safety glass with calculated force to create photorealistic faces from fracture patterns. Where most contemporary art preserves materials, Berger’s glass art technique embraces destruction as creation.
Since 2017, his broken glass portraits have appeared in major museums from Murano’s Glass Museum to Washington D.C.’s National Women’s History Museum. His subjects emerge from controlled chaos, fierce gazes staring through jagged shards held together only by thin polymer film.
This exploration reveals how a carpenter-turned-artist invented an entirely new sculptural language. You’ll discover his unique hammer technique, the materials that make his art possible, and why galleries worldwide now display what looks like beautiful vandalism.
Identity Snapshot
Name: Simon Berger
Born: April 9, 1976
Nationality: Swiss
Primary Role: Contemporary glass artist, visual artist, sculptor
Based: Niederönz, Switzerland
Training: Carpenter (professional training)
Medium: Safety glass, laminated glass, architectural glass
Technique: Hammer-based glass breaking, controlled shattering, morphogenesis
Signature Traits: Precision hammer strikes, photorealistic portraiture through fracture patterns, transparent-to-opaque transitions
Primary Subjects: Female portraits, human faces, anonymous subjects
Geographic Anchors: Herzogenbuchsee (birthplace), Niederönz (studio), Grenoble, Murano
Key Collections: National Women’s History Museum (Washington D.C.), Museo del Vetro (Murano, Italy), Vitromusée (Romont, Switzerland), Musei Civici di Treviso (Italy), Beit Beirut Museum (Lebanon)
Breakthrough Year: 2017 (first glass works)
Notable Commissions: Kamala Harris portrait (2021), We are Unbreakable project (Beirut tribute, 2021)
What Sets The Artist Apart
Berger turns destruction into creation. Where traditional glass art demands careful blowing and shaping, he strikes safety glass with a hammer to birth faces from fractures.
The closer his blows, the sharper the contrast. Each crack becomes a brushstroke in reverse.
His technique exists nowhere else. Glass breaking as portraiture didn’t exist before 2017, when he first questioned what car windshields could become beyond their industrial purpose.
The portraits hover between violence and delicacy. Female faces emerge with fierce gazes that either pierce through viewers or fixate beyond the frame, surrounded by jagged shards held together only by the safety film between glass layers.
Origins & Formation
Early Life and Training
Grew up in Herzogenbuchsee, canton of Bern. Attended primary and secondary school before pursuing carpentry as a profession.
Worked for years as a carpenter, developing hands-on material knowledge and technical precision that would later define his artistic approach.
Path to Art
Started with spray paint portraits. No formal art training, no academic mentors.
Moved to wood sculptures, a natural extension of his carpentry background. The street influenced his first creations.
Experimented with mechanics and used car bodies. Built assemblages from automotive scrap metal, drawn to materials others discarded.
The Glass Breakthrough (2016-2017)
While working with car carcasses, a windshield posed a question. What could safety glass become?
First glass works appeared in his Niederönz studio in 2017. The technique was immediate, the execution brutal, the results unprecedented.
Early inspiration traced back to a dentist visit years prior. Jean Tinguely’s artwork on one wall, its reflection in a mirror on the opposite wall. That moment planted something about surfaces and what they could reveal.
Recognition Arrives Fast
Media spotlight hit quickly. The technique’s originality drew institutional attention across Europe.
Street Art Fest Grenoble-Alpes invited him to create a live diptych. The work still stands at 113 cours Berriat, permanently installed in a window provided by ARaymond company.
Movement & Context
Beyond Traditional Glass Art
Berger exists outside established glass movements. Contemporary art rarely saw glass used this way before him.
Traditional glass artists like Dale Chihuly build forms through heat and breath. Berger subtracts through force.
Compare him to abstract expressionists who valued gesture and material honesty. His hammer blows share kinship with Jackson Pollock‘s drip paintings in their embrace of controlled chaos.
Sculptural Precedents
Closer comparisons lie with sculptors who embrace material destruction:
Tony Cragg layers and stacks found materials into new forms. Berger shares this repurposing instinct but amplifies violence.
John Chamberlain crushed car steel into sculptures. Both artists see beauty in automotive wreckage, though Chamberlain twisted metal while Berger fractures glass.
Donald Judd’s minimalist clarity influenced Berger’s structured approach. Where Judd demanded perfect surfaces, Berger deliberately destroys them.
Technique Contrasts
Edge quality: Berger’s fracture lines are sharp, uncontrolled within controlled parameters. Traditional glass edges are polished, deliberate.
Transparency: Most glass art maintains clarity or adds color. Berger converts transparency to opacity through strategic destruction.
Process: Glass blowing takes hours of heating and shaping. His portraits require minutes of precise striking, with no room for correction.
Materials, Techniques, and Process
Primary Materials
Safety glass (laminated glass, typically automotive grade). Two glass layers with a polymer film between them. The film holds shards in place after breaking.
Thickness varies by project. Thin glass (3-5mm) for smaller works, thicker panes (6-10mm) for large installations. Too thin breaks completely; too thick resists fracture patterns.
Custom hammer designed specifically for his technique. Exact specifications undisclosed, but weighted and balanced for controlled impact force.
Support structures built from wood and aluminum. Berger fabricates these himself, another carryover from carpentry training.
Process Breakdown
1. Conceptualization
Visits exhibition spaces first. Draws inspiration from architectural context and location-specific themes.
Sometimes inspiration arrives immediately. Other times requires research and reflection.
2. Reference Selection
Works from photographs of models, almost exclusively female subjects. Rarely names the subjects, maintaining anonymity that universalizes the portraits.
3. Surface Preparation
Glass pane mounted in custom frame. Black backing typically placed behind gallery pieces to make cracks appear white through opacity contrast.
Sketches outlines on glass surface. Marks zones that require more or less fracturing.
4. Execution
Strikes glass with hammer in rapid succession. Each blow must be precise. One wrong strike ruins the entire piece.
Closer blows create denser fracture patterns, appearing darker in the final image. Wider spacing creates lighter tones.
Process takes anywhere from minutes to hours depending on scale and detail level. Between 100 and 12,000 strikes per portrait.
5. Final State
No corrections possible. Material fragility means mistakes cannot be painted over or adjusted. The work either succeeds or gets discarded.
Palette and Value Control
Contrast emerges from fracture density, not pigment. Dense cracks scatter light, creating apparent white or gray tones against dark backgrounds.
Unfractured glass remains transparent, reading as the deepest darks.
Mid-tones achieved through moderate fracture spacing. Acts like hatching in drawing.
Light Interaction
Glass fragments reflect incident light, making surfaces gleam. Illumination angle changes the portrait’s appearance dramatically.
Some installations use backlighting. Others rely on ambient gallery light.
The work shifts as viewers move. What appears clear from one angle becomes opaque from another.
Themes, Subjects, and Iconography
The Human Face
“Human faces have always fascinated me,” Berger states. He focuses on physiognomy as cultural language.
Faces reveal expression, emotion, identity. Every culture reads facial features. This universal literacy makes his portraits accessible across contexts.
Female Portraiture
Almost all subjects are women. Berger cites the contrast between soft facial features, strong gazes, and his brutal handling of materials.
The juxtaposition amplifies tension. Delicate beauty rendered through violent destruction.
Fierce, direct eye contact in most works. Subjects look through viewers or past them, never passive or demure.
Morphogenesis
Berger calls his early portraits “morphogenesis,” borrowed from biology. The term describes organism formation through mechanical force generating stress.
His portraits aren’t organic, but force brings them into being. Hammer strikes function as generative stress.
The cracks form a labyrinth, what he terms “transparent wounds” or “intricacies of transparent wounds.”
Site-Specific Themes
Each exhibition often ties to location. For exhibitions in Sansepolcro, Italy, he drew inspiration from Aldous Huxley, who wrote about the city.
“I want to give visitors a theme rooted in the place itself,” he explains. Local context shapes subject selection and compositional choices.
Symbolism of Destruction
References the “broken window theory” from urban sociology but inverts it. Where broken windows signal decline, his broken glass signals hope and light.
“Disorder does not only lead to crime. Disorder can also be the kingdom of light. It’s about hope.”
Beauty emerging from destruction. Strength and fragility coexisting in the same material.
Compositional Patterns
Most works use frontal, direct composition. Subjects face forward, establishing immediate eye contact.
Square formats common for individual portraits. Rectangular formats for multi-panel installations.
Some recent works span multiple glass panels, creating fragmented images across dimensional space. Three-dimensional glass cubes used for sculptural portraits.
Notable Works
Kamala Harris Portrait (2021)
Medium: Shattered safety glass
Location: Abraham Lincoln Memorial, United States (later), National Women’s History Museum partnership
Significance: Created March 2021 after Harris became U.S. Vice President
Visual Signature: Portrait celebrates her “shattering of historic glass ceiling.” The metaphor embedded in material choice.
Impact: Catapulted Berger to international recognition. Led to surge in museum and gallery requests worldwide.
We are Unbreakable (2021)
Medium: Safety glass installation
Location: Beirut, Lebanon (Beit Beirut Museum)
Sponsor: MTV Lebanon
Context: Tribute to victims of August 4, 2020 Beirut explosion
Why It Matters: Connected broken glass to collective trauma and resilience. Title emphasizes strength through fracture.
L’espoir (2022)
Location: Grenoble, France (permanent installation)
Event: Street Art Festival Grenoble
Curator: Jerome Catz
Visual Details: Large-scale public work integrating into urban architecture. Visible from street level.
Significance: Permanent public art installation bringing glass portraiture outside gallery contexts.
Christ (2023)
Format: Square glass panel
Subject: Religious iconography departure from typical female portraiture
Innovation: Tackles sacred imagery through profane material destruction. References Baroque painting traditions of religious portraiture.
Untitled Sphere Series (2022)
Format: Three-dimensional glass sculptures
Innovation: Moves beyond flat panels into volumetric space
Process: Multiple glass surfaces arranged in spherical configurations. Portraits wrap around curved forms.
Related Works: Marks evolution toward spatial installation rather than pure two-dimensional work.
Broken Lives (2022)
Client: Ministry of Traffic Safety of France
Location: Paris
Curator: Laurent Marthaler
Context: Public safety campaign using automotive glass metaphorically. Windshield imagery connects to traffic accidents.
Exhibitions, Collections, and Provenance
Major Solo Exhibitions
Shattering Beauty (2023)
Museo del Vetro (Murano Glass Museum), Venice, Italy
Curated by Sandrine Welte and Chiara Squarcina
January 28 – May 7, 2023
Landmark show placing destructive glass technique in glass art’s historic heartland
The Doors of Perception (2023)
Museo Civico, Sansepolcro, Italy
Curated by Sandrine Welte and Prof. Pasquale Lettieri
Organized by Cris Contini Contemporary and Lo Studiolo d’Arte
July 2 – September 30, 2023
Thematically tied to Aldous Huxley’s writings about the city
Facing Grace (2023-2024)
Musei Civici di Treviso, Casa Robegan, Italy
December 15, 2023 – February 11, 2024
Organized by Cris Contini Contemporary
Engaged with Antonio Canova’s neoclassical sculpture legacy
Reverberation (2024)
Atelier Richelieu, Paris
Collaboration with Agence DC
Monuments (2024)
Underdogs Gallery, Lisbon, Portugal
Examined ephemeral memorials through fragile materials
ECHOES (2023)
Fabien Castanier Gallery, United States
Organized with Laurent Marthaler Contemporary
Lasting Moment (2024)
Laurent Marthaler Contemporary, Montreux, Switzerland
Duo exhibition with Pierre-Alain Münger
Until September 15, 2024
Upcoming Exhibitions (2025)
A Matter of Metamorphosis
Municipality of Casarsa della Delizia, Italy
April 12 – July 27, 2025
Site-specific exhibition, former Town Hall location
Secretum
Roccarainola, Church of Santa Maria delle Grazie, Naples province, Italy
May 8 – July 25, 2025
Tra Madre e Figlio
Chiesa degli Artisti, Rome
April 4 – May 4, 2025
Group Exhibitions
Glasstress – State of Mind (2022)
Fondazione Berengo, Murano, Venice
Curated by Adriano Berengo, Koen Vanmechelen, Ludovico Pratesi
Exhibited alongside Tony Cragg, Erwin Wurm, Jaume Plensa, Thomas Schütte
Break That Wall (2022)
Mazel Galerie, Brussels, Belgium
FRAGILE (2024)
Artstübli, Basel, Switzerland
Duo exhibition with Vierwind
10th anniversary exhibition, May 15-25, 2024
Museum Collections
National Women’s History Museum (Washington D.C., USA)
Kamala Harris portrait
Museo del Vetro (Murano, Italy)
Multiple works from Shattering Beauty exhibition
Vitromusée (Romont, Switzerland)
Permanent collection placement
Beit Beirut Museum (Lebanon)
We are Unbreakable installation
Murten Museum (Switzerland)
NOA Collection (Lucerne, Switzerland)
Musei Civici di Treviso (Italy)
Gallery Representation
Laurent Marthaler Contemporary
Zurich and Montreux, Switzerland
Founded 2013, primary Swiss representative
Focus on innovative materials and processes
Cris Contini Contemporary
London, UK
Major European representative organizing Italian exhibitions
Artstübli
Basel, Switzerland
Early supporter, gallery owner Philipp Brogli curated several projects
Fabien Castanier Gallery
United States
Underdogs Gallery
Lisbon, Portugal
Permanent Public Installations
Grenoble, France: Multiple works including L’espoir (2022) and diptych at 113 cours Berriat
Geneva, Switzerland: Abribus installation (2020), Promenade du Lac piece (2020)
Golf Course Ätigkofen, Switzerland (2021)
Market & Reception
Auction Performance
Works offered at auction since 2023.
Price Range: $7,371 – $11,250 USD
Auction Record: $11,250 USD for “Double I” (2022), sold at Heritage Auctions, Dallas, 2025
Market remains relatively young. Primary sales through galleries more common than secondary auction market.
Size and Format Standards
Two-dimensional works typically square format, dimensions vary by commission.
Multi-panel installations can reach monumental scale for architectural contexts.
Three-dimensional sculptures introduced 2022, still less common than flat panels.
Authentication Factors
Each work unique due to fracture pattern unpredictability. No two strikes create identical cracks.
Signed pieces include artist signature, though placement varies.
Provenance documentation through representing galleries provides authentication trail.
Gallery certificates of authenticity standard for primary market sales.
Material Considerations
Safety glass with polymer film prevents shard collapse. Work remains stable if properly mounted.
Temperature fluctuations pose minimal risk compared to traditional glass sculpture.
Structural integrity depends on frame quality. Berger’s custom wooden and aluminum supports designed for long-term stability.
Light damage not a concern (no pigments to fade), but physical impact obviously destructive.
Collector Interest
Appeals to contemporary art collectors interested in innovative techniques.
Crossover interest from glass art specialists and design-focused collectors.
Public institutions increasingly acquiring works due to exhibition history at major venues.
Commissions for corporate and governmental clients growing (BVLGARI, French Ministry of Traffic Safety).
Influence & Legacy
Upstream Influences
Jean Tinguely: Early inspiration from kinetic sculpture and mechanical art. The dentist office mirror moment watching Tinguely’s reflected work planted seeds.
Tony Cragg: Layered assemblages and material transformation influenced Berger’s approach to finding art in destruction.
John Chamberlain: Crushed car steel sculptures showed beauty in automotive wreckage. Direct parallel to Berger’s initial windshield experiments.
Donald Judd: Minimalist clarity and structured thinking shaped how Berger approaches composition despite violent execution.
Not Vital: Swiss artist whose architecture-art fusion continues to inspire Berger’s interdisciplinary thinking.
Technical Innovations
Pioneered glass breaking as two-dimensional portraiture method. The technique existed nowhere before 2017.
Developed custom tools specifically for controlled fracture creation. Standard hammers insufficient for precision required.
Established safety glass as viable portrait medium. Previous glass art focused on blown forms, cast pieces, or architectural applications.
Created methodology for translating photographic references into fracture patterns. No precedent existed for this translation.
Downstream Impact
Young glass artists now experimenting with destructive techniques. Berger opened a door others are walking through.
Public art installations increasingly incorporating fragile materials as statements about resilience and beauty.
Glass art discourse expanding beyond traditional glassblowing and casting conversations.
Cross-Domain Echoes
Photography: His process relates to photographic negative/positive relationships. Unfractured areas function as unexposed film.
Architecture: Site-specific installations influence how architects consider glass beyond pure transparency.
Street Art: Despite working with fragile materials, shares street art’s immediacy and public accessibility.
Performance Art: Live creation at festivals (Grenoble) connects to performance tradition. Destruction as witnessed spectacle.
Cultural Resonance
Broken glass carries negative connotations universally. Berger’s work forces viewers to reconsider those associations.
The “broken window theory” inversion offers hopeful counter-narrative. Disorder as light’s kingdom rather than crime’s precursor.
Portraits of anonymous women with fierce gazes contribute to conversations about female representation and strength.
Academic Reception
Art historians beginning to position his work within contemporary sculpture and material studies.
Glass art scholars examining how he challenges century-old glass traditions.
Still early in academic discourse. No major monographs yet, but exhibition catalogues from Murano and other institutions documenting technique and development.
How to Recognize a Berger at a Glance
Material: Always glass, typically safety/laminated glass with visible polymer film holding shards together
Subject: Primarily female faces, frontal orientation, direct eye contact or gaze beyond frame
Fracture Density: Tighter cracks create darker apparent tones; sparse cracks create highlights and mid-tones
Background: Usually black backing in gallery settings to maximize white appearance of fractured areas
Edge Quality: Jagged, unpolished glass edges visible on close inspection. No grinding or finishing.
Scale Range: From modest squares (60-80cm) to architectural installations spanning multiple meters
Signature Placement: Typically signed, though location varies. Look for handwritten signature on glass or frame.
Light Behavior: Surface gleams and shifts with viewing angle. Fragments catch light differently than clear areas.
Transparency Play: Image oscillates between clarity and opacity depending on viewing distance and position
Fabrication Evidence: No brush marks, no tool marks except hammer impact craters. Purely subtractive process.
Mounting System: Custom frames, usually dark wood or black metal. Support structures visible from sides.
Anonymity: Subjects rarely named or identified. Universal rather than specific portrait approach.
Format Preference: Square format most common for single panels. Rectangular for multi-panel compositions.
Thematic Consistency: Faces dominate. Rare departures into religious imagery or sculptural forms.
FAQ on Simon Berger
What technique does Simon Berger use?
Berger strikes safety glass with a custom hammer, creating controlled fracture patterns that form photorealistic portraits. Denser strikes produce darker tones through light scattering. The polymer film between glass layers holds shards together. Each piece requires 100-12,000 precise blows, with no room for error or correction.
What materials does Simon Berger work with?
He uses laminated safety glass (automotive-grade windshield material) ranging from 3-10mm thickness. Black backing placed behind creates white appearance in fractured areas through contrast. Custom wooden and aluminum support frames fabricated by Berger hold the glass. His specialized hammer design remains proprietary for precise impact control.
Is Simon Berger self-taught?
Yes. Berger received no formal art training. His professional background is carpentry, which provided technical material knowledge. He learned through experimentation with spray paint, wood, and scrap metal before discovering glass. Artists like Tony Cragg, John Chamberlain, and Donald Judd influenced his self-directed development.
What are Simon Berger’s most famous works?
The Kamala Harris portrait (2021) at the National Women’s History Museum gained international attention. “We are Unbreakable” (2021) in Beirut honored explosion victims. “L’espoir” (2022) remains permanently installed in Grenoble. His Murano Glass Museum exhibition “Shattering Beauty” (2023) marked recognition in glass art’s historic center.
How did Simon Berger discover his technique?
While experimenting with used car bodies and windshields around 2016-2017, he questioned what automotive glass could become beyond its industrial purpose. His carpentry skills enabled material manipulation. The breakthrough came in his Niederönz studio when he first struck safety glass to create figurative imagery through texture.
Why does Simon Berger focus on faces?
Human faces universally communicate across cultures through expression and emotion. Berger states faces have always fascinated him, particularly the contrast between delicate female features and his violent material handling. The juxtaposition between fragility and fierce gazes creates tension. Anonymous subjects maintain universal rather than specific narratives.
Where has Simon Berger exhibited?
Major venues include Museo del Vetro (Murano), National Women’s History Museum (Washington D.C.), Vitromusee (Romont), and Musei Civici di Treviso. He participated in Glasstress alongside artists like Pablo Picasso-level contemporaries. Galleries include Laurent Marthaler Contemporary, Cris Contini Contemporary, and Underdogs Lisbon. Permanent installations exist across Grenoble and Geneva.
Can Simon Berger fix mistakes in his work?
No. Glass fragility means one wrong hammer blow destroys the entire piece. Unlike oil painting or acrylic painting, corrections are impossible. Berger must discard failed works completely. This irreversibility creates nervousness when starting new pieces, requiring complete focus and blocking out self-doubt during execution.
What does morphogenesis mean in Berger’s art?
Morphogenesis describes organism formation through mechanical force generating stress. Berger borrowed this biological term because hammer strikes function as generative force bringing portraits to life. The fracture networks form what he calls “transparent wounds” or labyrinthine crack patterns. Force creates rather than destroys in his inverted creative process.
What influences shaped Simon Berger’s style?
A childhood dentist visit where Jean Tinguely artwork reflected in a mirror planted early seeds. Tony Cragg’s layered sculptures showed material transformation possibilities. John Chamberlain’s crushed car steel demonstrated automotive wreckage as beauty. Donald Judd’s minimalism influenced his structured approach. Not Vital’s architecture-art fusion continues inspiring interdisciplinary thinking.
Conclusion
Simon Berger transformed glass breaking from vandalism into visual poetry. His hammer strikes challenge centuries of glass art tradition, proving destruction can birth beauty when wielded with carpenter’s precision.
From his Niederönz studio, this Swiss contemporary artist redefined what painting mediums could be. Safety glass became his canvas, fractures his brushstrokes.
His portraits in Murano’s glass museum and Washington D.C.’s monuments prove the technique’s lasting impact. Each anonymous female face stares through jagged shards, fierce and unbreakable despite material fragility.
The broken window theory never looked so hopeful. Where others see disorder, Berger reveals light’s kingdom through controlled chaos and morphogenesis.
