Simon Berger always loved working with unusual materials – wood, metal, plastic, you name it! And he always loved mastering new skills. One of his latest obsessions is… shattering glass with hammer. But he does not just smash it, he uses glass as a canvas to create an amazing human portraits.
Let’s take a look at this shattered glass. Looks like an act of vandalism, right? There’s way too much damage, you can’t fix it. It’s going to need a replacement. But once you zoom it out a little bit, you realize there’s a certain pattern and it actually looks like a…human face.
Simon picked this material for a reason. He is sure that glass has a huge potential in art, we just don’t know it yet. In fact, Simon believes he has found an art technique that is actually one of a kind.
When it comes to choosing glass, Berger says it’s better to use a safety glass since it doesn’t splinter when broken. In fact, you can hit it as many times as you want and the pieces will stay in place.
Again, safety glass is tough but it is still a glass, and glass is a very tricky material. One wrong hit and it starts fracturing in a totally wrong direction. So you have to be extra careful with your hits.
Berger’s favorite topic is human faces. Because for the most part, people are responsible for broken glass. Every fracture is the imprinted evidence of an incident. His portraits look like a person hitting the glass wall many times trying to break through, but always to no avail, leaving their image embedded on the glass forever.
The artist starts his work by carefully examining the photo of the model he’s going to “paint”. He transfers the outlines onto the glass and marks the spots he wants to leave untouched. And then comes the fun part – the glass breaking. As a result, we have something that initially seemed like a reckless act of vandalism but turned out to be a fascinating piece of art.