Artist Statement
"Simon Berg’s artistic practise revolves around objects. Objects, which remind us of our transitory, being in the world. Berg’s photographs bring us relentlessly close to the borders of things. We see the rust, the dust, the scratches and the skin so thin that we are almost on the other side. The side where we are only blood and cells. Cells that leave us and turn into dust in the cracks of the floor.
The directness of Berg’s images creates an ambivalent feeling of being attracted and repulsed at the same time. We want the object until we understand that we are the object and will slowly deteriorate. The im- ages point at the thin line between us and the world and function as a subtle existential examination of being."
- Lotte Fløe Christensen,
Process Statement
"...his works are animated by a slightly beckettian combination of boredom and humor with regard to his subject matter, paired with a similar struggle on the formal level between outstanding technical skill and a certain taste for bad photographic performances. I remember trying descriptions like “sparklingly dull”, “ecstatic boredom” and “euphoria of decrepitude”. I don't know if I actually got something through by these expressions, but anyway they denote something in his images that makes you laugh as if seeing something absurd although it is a common kind of sight, but you never saw it like this."
- Lars-Erik Hjertström Lappalainen
"Simon Berg’s pictorial language is both excessive and precise. Working consistently with the snapshot style and a ruthless attention to materiality, he focuses on single details of the everyday, which become unpleasant and yet fascinating to look at. The colours of flesh, meat and skin are dominating in this dark journal of nails, hands and objects relating to the body, as for instance a belt on a chair. Photographing surfaces of skin, things and furniture in close-up and with a hard flash reveals the excesses like dirt, spots, marks and wrinkles, and the resulting imagery holds a physical effect. As the artist notes: “In the meaning ‘twisted’ my works are perverted. Something ordinary, suddenly it shows us its true colours, or more likely, just different colours. A view that opens up a world without limits, a world without control.”
Simon Berg (b 1938) has a Master’s degree in photography from the Valand Academy, Gothenburg University. He has published books, participated in several exhibitions internationally and received a number of grants."
- Louise Wolthers, Curator at Hasselblad Center (?Excerpt from the New Nordic photography Catalogue 2014)
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