--https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
> While interesting […]
“On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting” --also hnguidelines
I think this is probably the best idiomatic example of the type of story that I think belongs on HN that I've seen in quite some time.
https://museemagazine.com/features/2018/10/15/walead-beshty-...
The technique is cool though.
My only motivation for submitting the OP was thinking that others here would find it cool and interesting too.
That falls within the HN guidelines, don't you think?
It’s like there are 2 axes: - cool technique and - cool picture. The second is way more important than the first, which is way painters are still on top of the 2D art world.
Some people can do both though. And i’d say even in these cases the art world tend to dismiss the weird technique as gimmicky.
And I am confused about the “doing it any other way”? I don’t really see other ways to achieve the same result. Say painting and photography will both produce end results that are quite different. The skills are very different. The end material is also quite different. The same way stained glass is quite different from painting
Stuff like that though always makes me curious
Without judging the artistic merit of these pieces, I submitted the OP only because the idea and process of "painting" on glass with a hammer struck me as cool and interesting (pun intended). In any case, artistic merit is always in the eye of the beholder.
The fact he has a portrait of Kamala Harris called “glass ceiling breaker” and one of the victims of the Beirut explosion called #weareunbreakable suggests that you don’t need to dig particularly deep to find meaningful subtext in the choice of material and technique.
If anything it’s maybe a bit on-the-nose.
This is what I was driving at. I should have been more specific to say not particularly meaningful or evocative to me. From the previews I've seen it's all based around shattering and breaking. Where I will give credit, there's one: "Transformation" where natural light is reflected at the shattered glass to portray a face which I find to be fascinating. The rest feel kitschy, it's not quite to my tastes.
Contemporary glass artist Simon Berger's unique sculptural language explores the depth of his material through striking and cracking the glass he works on with a hammer. The pane of glass is both the supportive structure of his artwork, as well as the visualization of his artistic handwriting, playing with transparency of the material. The closer and briefer the blows, the stronger the contrasts and the shades. In his hands, the hammer is not a tool of destruction, but rather an amplifier of effects.
Simon Berger began his artistic explorations by painting portraits with spray cans before turning to other mediums. A carpenter by training, his natural attraction to wood inspired his first artistic creations within his studio.
A lover of mechanics, he also spent plenty of time working with used car bodies to create assemblages. It was while pondering what to do with a car windshield that his idea for working with glass was born. “Human faces have always fascinated me”, explained Simon. “On safety glass, these motifs come into their own and magically attract the viewer. It is a process of discovery from abstract fogging to figurative perception.”