Museo Civico di Sansepolcro

Curated by Pasquale Lettieri and Sandrine Welte

In collaboration with Cris Contini Contemporary

Sansepolcro, Italy

2023

Each exhibition concept begins with Simon Berger visiting the location where his art will be shown. Rather than superimposing his own ideas on local exhibitions, the artist takes the opportunity to explore new themes and expand his artistic potential to accommodate new ideas. For his exhibition at the Museo Civico di Sansepolcro, Italy, he was inspired by the rich artistic history of the town, made famous by Aldous Huxley's 1925 essay describing Piero della Francesca's ‘Resurrection’ as “the greatest painting in the world”.  It was this essay that saved the city from bombing during the Second World War and ensured its continued existence and appeal. Huxley's later work ‘The Doors of Perception”, published in 1954, encouraged Berger to create an exhibition that challenges ways of perceiving and looking, inviting visitors to engage with the dynamic artworks in a process of disintegration and synthesis, where the different frames come together to form a coherent whole. To do so, he built a labyrinth that guides visitors through the exhibition thereby playing with illusion and vision, while suggesting different visual perceptions. In this exhibition, Simon Berger ventured further than ever before, allowing a portrait of Aldous Huxley to dissolve into abstraction in a series of portraits of the author. The combination of the depth of the themes discussed and the variety of ways of looking at them makes for a dense and intense exhibition. The exhibition was curated by Sandrine Welte and Pasquale Lettieri in collaboration with the Cris Contini Gallery.