Caspar Berger EN - Caspar Berger

Lamb of God / Self-Portrait 52, after Zubarán

“In Zubarán’s painting of the Lamb of God, the Lamb of God looks at you questioningly. With one eye open, this lamb, its legs bound together, waits for what is to come. When I first saw this painting in person, I become moved. It is like a still life, in which everything seems to be good, only you sense that doom is approaching. Is it the Lamb of God’s resignation that makes this painting so powerful and with it tells us that there is very little we can see and know for ourselves? About many things, after all, we are powerless.”

Likeness / Self-Portrait 53

This work is the collector’s edition of my monograph published by nai010 in 2024. Together with very talented people, we tried to capture 25 years of my art practice in one book. Four chapters, four languages, many carefully chosen words and more than 230 images later, here is EVENBEELD / LIKENESS / REFLETS / REFLEJOS.

Ego Vivo / Self-portrait 25

“Who honors themselves with a monument? Many do not, I think so, while life is really a mad miracle. Everyone deserves to erect a monument to themselves during life. Through a CT scan, I had an exact 3D copy made of my upper arm bone. I had this enlarged and cast in bronze and then placed on an impressive pedestal with the text “Ego Vivo” (I am alive). An eight-foot high monument to myself while alive, for inspiration to every other human being.”

Untitled 4

“The look in a child’s eyes makes you melt as an adult. By leaving out precisely the part of the face to which we attribute the most personality, you look beyond the eyes into the pitch black, immeasurable depths of young life. I want to show the beauty of a blank slate. Everything can still be formed – and perhaps we secretly long back to that time.

Vera Icon / Self-portrait 10

Are You Talking To Me

“What happens when you are completely silent and retreat into your deepest being. Who is talking to you? What does your inner self say? Is it a world that is endlessly vast or oppressively small? This bronze box has an image on four sides; two closed eyes on the outside and an image of a mouth and an ear on the inside. By moving the work, I play with these thoughts. Sometimes I look outside and just other times I listen. Do I hear complaining, do I hear future dreams, do I talk myself into courage for my functioning in the physical world, or do I hear something else after all? In meditation, silence is a moment of spiritual practice, an attempt to expand the mind so I can make contact with an immeasurable space. What or who I hear in this universe is unclear, leaving the question: Are you talking to me?”

Untitled 2

In the beginning

“The original English version of the Bible text of Genesis I reads, ‘Then God said: let us make man in our image, after out likeness.’ In this work, I swap the words ‘God’ with ‘AI,’ artificial intelligence, and reverse the words ‘us’ and ‘man.’ Man, who after the Fall thought himself able to discern good and evil, has created a new creator with artificial intelligence.”

Judas

“The apostle Judas was erased from the official lineup of apostles after he betrayed Jesus. All the while, without his act, history would have proceeded very differently. Judas is hidden here, his loot in hand. He has made his choice. Only we are only human, and nothing human is alien to us. Judas thus forms a mirror for all of us, all the more reason to show him.

Lamb Of God / Self-Portrait 51

“On the altar cloth, under the Lamb of God’s by the van Eyck brothers, the famous altarpiece of Ghent, is written: Ecce Agnus Dei, Qui Tollit Peccata Mundi (Behold the Lamb of God’s, which takes away the sins of the world). Through the forgiveness of one’s sins, one gets the opportunity to start over, a chance to be able to change oneself. But are there things that are not renewable in this way and require a true personal sacrifice?”

Pietà

“Michelangelo’s Pietà, the grieving Mary with her dead son in her arms, is one of the most perfect images in the history of art. Not only is it totally balanced, it exudes the power of the institution where it stands. Mary’s mourning is physical, something under her skin, impossible for us to see or feel. To have this experienced, I decided to turn the composition of Michelangelo’s sculpture inside out to turn the subcutaneous grief outward. This formed a rough picture. Mary is present here only in the form of the cloak, giving the viewer a chance to occupy this space. With that, this Pietà is a monument to all mothers with dead sons.”

Inner Voice

Let Us Make Man

“In Rome, I was able to look at Michelangelo’s fresco in the Sistine Chapel for a long time. In the center of the ceiling he painted God’s creation of Adam: God reaches out with his hand from a cloud to the naked Adam, the representation of the divine creation of man. Of course, by now we know that things have changed, only now a new question has been added; how will humanity continue to evolve? By developing self-learning computers, have we not created a new creation ‘s power that will soon exceed our own? For the two cases in Let Us Make Man, I took the two poses of the God and Adam from Michelangelo’s fresco. Adam is on the left and God on the right. Only I opened the suitcase for the flying God. The question is whether the new creator will be satisfied with this space. “

Innocenzo X

Movements

“We move all day long, often without conscious thought. Only some movements have been assigned more meaning than others, sometimes they are even forbidden. At the end of the nineteenth century, Eadweard Muybridge made geometrical analyses of moving animals and people The movements became analyses without any meaning. I also approached the meaningful and sometimes fraught movements of the 9 -ismes from the work Inner Voice using this method. As a kind of geometric dance steps, free of meaning and thereby of any interpretation. I have approached the meaningful and sometimes fraught movements of the 9 -ismes from the work Inner Voice also according to this method. As a kind of geometric dance steps, undevoid of their meaning. But unlike Eadweard Muybridge’s analisis, the meaning turns out to outweigh the dance steps and the movements are still occupied. “

Caspar Berger

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