Simone Berno was born in Padova

on January 20, 1975.

​Far from the ephemeral rhythms of the art market and the visual saturation of the digital age, Simone Berno’s artistic practice is defined by a profound formal and conceptual radicality. Developed over a thirty-year career independent of commercial art market dynamics, Berno has built a body of work grounded in a direct, physical engagement with matter, the manipulation of time, and the perceptual redefinition of space.

 

Graphic Roots and Urban Actions (1990s)

The artist's evolution takes root in the 1990s through a series of dense, intricate, and multifaceted drawings. In these early works, the structural rigor of Cubism merges with the evocative impulses of Surrealism. This visual language forms the historical foundation of his practice: forms fragments across inclined planes to reveal a further, surreal reality, one that exists precisely because it is rendered visible.

This line of inquiry found a natural extension in Street Art and independent urban interventions. Among these were actions with the Roman collective Arte da Rubare (Art to Steal), as well as subtle disruptions of daily life. In one notable project, Berno anonymously replaced factory printed images inside store bought picture frames at commercial furniture outlets with his own original prints, returning them to the display shelves accompanied by genuine proof of purchase.

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Living Matter and Industrial Sculpture (2000s)

In the early 2000s, Berno shifted his focus toward sculpture, utilizing industrial metals. Steel, copper, and brass, salvaged from industrial archeology sites, abandoned structures, and decommissioned factories, were hand cut, bent, pierced, and worked. Rather than removing oxidation, abrasion, and corrosion, Berno elevated these marks into a formal vocabulary.

The patina of time becomes color and memory: the metal sheet ceases to be a mere support and becomes living material carrying a lived historical memory, offering its surface to the creation of contemporary conceptual works.​

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Inaccessibility and Decay: The Poetic Hotel Project (2019 to Present)

This reflection on time, memory, and the inaccessibility of the artwork reaches its focal point in Poetic Hotel (2019 to present). In this project, Berno transformed a hotel abandoned since 1997 into a radical commentary on artistic experience and consumption. Preserving the structure in its exact state of abandonment, midst period furnishings and traces of past lives, the artist created site specific interventions inside the rooms.

In a gesture opposing the commercial spectacle of the art market, access to the upper floors was permanently sealed and forbidden. The artwork is thus removed from view, left to the natural decay of the building and its eventual demolition: an act of independence that rejects immediate approval to assert the artwork as an elusive and inaccessible dimension.