Simon Berger: The Doors of Perception

The exhibition “The Doors of Perception” by Swiss artist Simon Berger in the Sala delle Pietre of the Civic Museum of Sansepolcro

In this exhibition, Simon Berger embraces the city’s artistic heritage as the starting point for a commentary that develops from Aldous Huxley’s autobiographical book published in 1954, in which the author describes Piero della Francesca’s Resurrection as “the greatest painting in the world”, thus saving it from the bombings of World War II. Later, in his autobiographical account, the English writer examines the Renaissance artist’s work with reference to the drapery, thus opening up the semantics of contemplation to new modes of vision. With The Doors of Perception, the Swiss artist undertakes to investigate precisely these mechanisms of the observing mind, that solitary universe in which the infinite vagueness of imagination and conception come together.
Through an immersive installation of box-shaped glass canvases, the labyrinthine structures of the human intellect are replicated, playing with the illusion of sight and the seduction of the senses.
In his works, Simon Berger transforms the very act of destruction into a possibility, outlining a new paradigm of anti-creation that resonates through the cracks and creases he carves with a hammer. His lacerated portraits lead the eye into the tangle of transparent wounds that he calls ‘morphogenesis’. A pioneer of this technique, through destruction, the artist allows beauty to emerge.
The hammer is no longer simply a tool but becomes an amplifier of effect. The reciprocity of this dialogue between past and present is sealed by Simon Berger’s donation of the work ‘Eyes of Perception’, which thus becomes part of the collection of the Museo Civico di Sansepolcro.