Hans-Christian Berg

Summary
HC Berg is a young Finnish artist who has been steadily growing in international renown over the last ten years. With observation and perception as his subject matter, Berg employs a variety of media from metals to glass to acrylics to create works that possess unlimited optical dexterity. His art challenges customary ways of seeing and viewing, with the interaction of material and light offering surprises and insights.
Berg’s works are independent entities and simultaneously sensitive interpreters of the history of architecture, design and art. His sculp¬tures and optical installations are not cold objects but profound ex¬pressions of human creativity, and as such they establish a strong interactive bond with their environment. They call for audience par¬ticipation, challenge the boundaries of vision, and force both the body as well as the invisible soul into motion. As the contemporary art specialist Leevi Haapala has noted, Berg’s works appeal to and engage all the human senses. In concluding his essay in the present catalogue, Haapala poignantly observes that Berg’s works present to us “Occasional wonders of creation: here and now – on earth.”
Berg’s works do not submit to the hegemony of the magisterial gaze as lifeless objects, but rather they challenge the entire human frame of reference. In his works we see ourselves, our wavering selfhood, our otherness, and through these acts of engagement and revela¬tion contact is established with the beat that is life itself. His work present a network of spatio-temporal dimensions in which image and language, thoughts and words are intertwined. In front of these works, in dialogue with them, we can understand why creativity is a basic human instinct and why art is a fundamental manifestation of this instinct.
Janne Gallen- Kallela -Siren
Berg was the recipient of Finland’s Young Artist of the Year award in 2007, and his works have been exhibited in galleries, museums, and art fairs worldwide. Berg’s artworks have been collected by all major museums in Finland, including Kiasma, EMMA, Helsinki City Art Museum, Oulu City art Museum, Tampere City Art Museum, Wäinö Aaltonen Art Museum in Turku, Ars Nova Museum in Turku, as well as by foundations, institutions and private collections around the world.