Solo exhibition at the Museo Civici di Treviso Casa Robegan

In collaboration with Cris Contini Contemporary

15 December 2023 — 11 February 2024

Treviso, Italy

Curated by Sandrine Welte and Pasquale Lettieri

Taking inspiration from Antonio Canova‘s revolutionary artistic work for the exhibition at the Musei Civici di Treviso, Simon Berger endeavours a new take on the complex oeuvre by the Italian sculptor whose importance and value for art continues to resonate today. In consideration of the intricate link between the city of Treviso and Canova’s birthplace in Possagno, Facing Grace engages with Canova‘s unique sculptural idiom by transposing his own aesthetic research into the human form to the repertoire of mythological narrative, studied in great detail by the Neoclassical artist.

The point of departure for the body of works presented thereby becomes Canova’s The Three Graces, an outstanding example of sculptural virtuosity in terms of composition and movement. United in their elegant posture and delicate beauty, the three goddesses are lost in an affectionate embrace as they face each other. Their peaceful balance speaks to their allegorical nature of mirth, youthful beauty and elegance as they altogether appear to exude an air of joyous lightness of being. From their physical appearance as a sculptural group of three, they are translated to a new corporeal shape in lines of cracks and creases through Simon Berger‘s ‘morphogenesis‘-technique.

Engaging with canons of beauty, the Swiss artist creates various installations that revolve around notions of the sublime, allowing for its many faces to appear. Glass, his material of choice, thereby acts as a medium to play with modes of perception, allowing for a both literal and metaphorical deconstruction and synthesis of the underlying mythological accounts. Layers of meaning are thus orchestrated into a comment on ‘facing grace‘ as his two-dimensional sculptural portraits invite a look beyond the surface in a virtual encounter with his vitreous drawings - in search of the beautiful.

Text by Sandrine Welte