HC Berg is a 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 sculptures and optical installations are not cold objects but profound expressions of human creativity, and as such they establish a strong interactive bond with their environment. They call for audience participation, 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 revelation 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 Sirén, PhD
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.
Summary
HC Berg lives and works in Inkoo, on the southern coast of Finland. Berg was born in Espoo and holds master's degrees from the Department of Sculpture of the Academy of Fine Arts and from the Ceramics and glass design programme of the University of Art and Design from 2002(Now. Aalto University). He held his first solo exhibition in 2004 and has taken part in group exhibitions since 1998.
HC Berg is a member of the Association of Finnish Sculptors and the Artists’ Association of Finland. He is a founding member of the Glass cooperative Nuutajärven Lasitaitajat ry., 'LASIKOMPPANIA', which was established in 2002 in Nuutajärvi glass village. The goal and aim of the cooperative is to support artistic and creative glass making in Finland and to protect a continuum in a glassmaking tradition that was begun in 1793.
HC Berg has received numerous honors and awards ranging from the young sculptor award in the memory of Sculptor Utriainen in 2000,
The young artist award in 2007 which is awarded for young artist with an international appeal with an opportunity to hold an exhibition at the Tampere Art Museum in Finland
The Art Society awarded HC Berg The William Thuring Foundation` S Main Prize in 2009 for excellency in Art for a mid-career Artist.
He won the juried sculpture competition for the new “Fennia ”House in Helsinki , Finland in 2008, Redi, Kalasatama, Helsinki juried competition, 2016
HC Berg was in 2014 awarded 1 prize in the execution of Contemporary Calligraphy at the 6th edition of the Sharjah Calligraphy Biennal.