Museo del Vetro

Curated by Sandrine Welte and Chiara Squarcina

In collaboration with Berengo Studio

Murano, Italy

2022-2023

The exhibition 'Shattering Beauty' at the Museo del Vetro in Murano, Italy, was a collaboration with Berengo Studio, and curated by Sandrine Welte and Chiara Squarcina. It was one of Berger's largest institutional exhibitions and had a strong influence on his approach to exhibitions as site-specific interventions. The artworks were created to tell a story about this stronghold of glass production, combining historical elements with new explorations of contemporary glass art. The reflective, shimmering surfaces of the glass and the turquoise colouring of some of the panels evoked the unique canals and the lagoon that surrounds the floating city. The metal cube frames, in which the portraits were placed at different angles, created a spatial layout in which visitors could rediscover each artwork from different angles, experiencing new layers and points of view. By incorporating the lion as the symbol of Venice a connection to the century-old history of the city was created, bringing in her past. This was further evoked by likening the face - the canvas of the human soul - to the mask, thereby alluding to the tradition of carnival while insinuating the play with hiding and revealing. In a further regard, Berger explored not only the uniqueness of Venice, but also the 'broken' tradition of glassmaking. Rather than treating the fragile material with care, he recurred to this characteristic technique, thus metaphorically destroying a boundary that no one had ever dared to cross. The exhibition paid tribute to the long history of glassmaking, beautifully revealing at the same time all the possibilities inherent in the medium that are yet to be explored.