Projects — Andrey Berger

Deus Particula, Andrey Berger

Interiors: UNK Interiors,
Chief architect: Olga Anokhina,
Art curator: Arseniy Kryukov, Ars Nova,
Parametric design: ContextMachine studio,
Engineering and installation: Macrofabrica, SK Struktura,
Photography: Daniel Annenkov,
Location: Moscow City, Moscow

Two large-scale art panels are installed on the first floor of the new Moscow Towers skyscraper—within two side lobbies that will soon open to visitors. The project exists at the intersection of art and engineering, where architecture, reflection, and movement merge into a single system.

I was interested in how high-rise architecture inherits from Gothic tradition—the same aspiration upward, the connection between earth and sky through light. Medieval cathedrals were built around a beam that pierced the space from above, creating a vertical vector. In Moscow Towers, this principle is embodied in the building’s architectural logic: three towers are organized around a transparent central volume, compressed between two mirrored ones—symbolizing a beam of light.

The complex is based on a tripartite plan, reminiscent of a Gothic cathedral with three naves. This parallel became the starting point for the concept. I chose to “split” this central beam and trace how its energy fractures upon contact with the foundation and disperses across the first floor—particularly through the side lobbies where the panels are located. The artistic layer becomes a system that captures this movement, a visual record of how light and color propagate through the architectural body of the building.

The composition follows the rhythm of light in motion. Myriads of metaphorical particles form a flow resembling murmuration—a structure that emerges from the coordinated movement of many elements. These particles do not depict light itself, but rather its trace, its presence. On the surface of the panels, the viewer does not see the flow directly, but its imprint—the trajectories of particles frozen in a golden reflection of thousands of small elements.

The technical foundation of the project was developed in collaboration with architects and engineers. The panels are composed of thousands of mirrored plates, each with an individual tilt angle and tone. A parametric system of reflection control amplifies the hand-painted layer applied over the mirrored surfaces. Different types of polishing allow light to be directed differently across each section. In this way, technology becomes not just a tool, but a co-author of the artistic gesture.

A cloud of metallic panels transforms into a canvas, while the line—guided by the artist’s hand—acts as a mediator between technology and human presence. For me, this project is about how architecture can once again become a carrier of ideas, and about the embodied experience of space by the viewer.

Urban Art Fair, Paris, France, 2025.

Landscapes in action, Triumph Gallery Moscow, Russia, 2025

Andrey Berger creates cartographies of the invisible — his works capture not physical topography, but fissures in the very fabric of our contemporaneity: digital borders of the internet, zones of political tension, sociocultural fault lines. Beginning with automatic writing as his departure point, he developed a visual language for these "surfaces and reliefs," where abstract signs become symbolic notations mapping emerging territories.
His projects are not maps in the traditional sense, but rather instruments of perceptual awareness: they reveal how spaces (from the internet to near-Earth orbit) transform into arenas of erosion. While Berger avoids direct representation, his works remind us that any map is a product of someone's perspective — and thus, a political act. In this, he aligns more with speculative philosophers than traditional landscape artists: his concern lies not in how the world appears, but in how it might be remade.

Contour, Set Projects, Nizhny Novgorod, Russia, 2025.

Andrey Berger's project explores the intermittent nature of evolution, drawing parallels between biological and historical upheavals where collapses lead to sudden, unpredictable transformations. While humanity often rationalizes past disasters, it struggles to foresee future shifts. Unlike typical artistic research, Berger’s approach avoids scientific explanations—his graphic works depict enigmatic biological processes, resembling artifacts from a post-catastrophe lab, leaving interpretation open and emphasizing the mystery of evolutionary and historical change.

Branching phase, Set Projects Gallery, Moscow, Russia, 2024

Andrey Berger's project explores the intermittent nature of evolution, drawing parallels between biological and historical upheavals where collapses lead to sudden, unpredictable transformations. While humanity often rationalizes past disasters, it struggles to foresee future shifts. Unlike typical artistic research, Berger’s approach avoids scientific explanations—his graphic works depict enigmatic biological processes, resembling artifacts from a post-catastrophe lab, leaving interpretation open and emphasizing the mystery of evolutionary and historical change.

No Place with Time Stopped, FUTURO Gallery, Nizhny Novgorod, Russia, 2024

Every one of us had times of crisis or change at least once in our life. In moments like these, you strive to find support in something, and sometimes, you just realise that you want to hide where the unpredictability of the passing time can’t get to you. In different cultures and traditions, there is a recurrent image symbolizing such a place—it’s a cave. A cave is a symbol of a female womb (to penetrate it and become a man), an underworld of spirits (to go down there and find yourself on the other side of death), and the centre of Mother Earth (to get to it and uncover the Great Mystery). In Antiquity, a cave became an image of a philosophical prison from which unenlightened souls could not escape, and in Christianity, it turned into an important symbol of divine revelation. Whatever role this image played in different cultures, time after time, it became an important part of cultural myth.

A cave is a special place. Strictly speaking, one can’t feel cosy or comfortable in there. It is often below ground level; it’s damp, cool, and dark. Its labyrinths are unpredictable, its passages are narrow, and at any moment, there can be a dead end or a hole waiting for the explorer. Artist Andrey Berger conducts his own experiment, descending into a giant cave inside which eternal peace reigns and where time seems to have stopped. Underground landscape, unchanged for centuries; intricate rock formations, layering on each other with inhumanly slow speed; monotonously dripping water; maximum humidity and always the same temperature. What does he seek to find and understand? Perhaps he strives to immerse himself in the bosom of nature, where you might have been before you were born or where you will go after death, or just to test his strength and discover what it is like to get somewhere where time goes differently. After the journey to the other side, some artefacts are left: fragments of cave surfaces, transferred onto wooden panels, frozen stalagmites, a rope, and some clay. Clothes and shoes covered in clay are hard to clean: this is the trace that the cave explorer will retain when they returns to the surface.

Both an enticing and frightening place, a cave can kill its visitor or introduce them to the sense of serenity they appear to have been seeking for so long. However, such places that negate human vanity, are best able to show us the value of life and changes it brings. Between the tranquility of the cave and the unpredictability of the world of the living, the choice here is in favor of the latter—and it is not paradoxical. Once underground, you realize more clearly than ever that there is no place for a human where time has stopped—we are time itself, the value of which is easy to feel when faced with the timelessness.

Catalog, Futuro gallery, Moscow, Russia, 2024.

Tidings Russian Museum Saint Petersburg, 2024

Alas - is a moving three-dimensional model of Moscow's central district. The object was composed of electronic stuffing, a laser scanning beam, 3D printing, and was included in the installation.
Systematic information update about urban spaces requires continuous analysis of incoming data. Cities are managing this through modern technology. This is just a partial list of the data collection methods and sources: space satellites, unmanned cars and drones, traffic police transport, outdoor surveillance cameras and the non-stop data collection from civic users' gadgets. Just like a laser scanner they relentlessly collect all kinds of metrics, shaping a new digital identity. All these activities are semi-automated and happen seamlessly to the human eye. Meanwhile, these processes hold the key to the understanding of how fast the space around us is changing. It was essential for me to visualize the process of data collection and its various aspects with this project.

Andrey Berger / Benjamin Volckaerts - Metamorphosis, In-gate Gallery, 2024

In this exhibition two artists enter in a dialogue around the theme of the flow of permanent changes which we experience every moment. The sequence of states, the permanent transformation of every part of the reality around us, fluidity of the present is visualized by the artists through different techniques and materials – paper, plywood, painting, ceramics, plaster, metal, and wooden constructions.

The theme is disclosed through interplay of the artists’ vision and approach. Berger’s scientific research, studies of natural micro-structures are turned into sophisticated half-abstract compositions remind the reality which is hidden by the external visible shell of objects and creatures and can be discovered only with optical devices. The artist speaks about interconnection and coexistence of two parallel universes - macro and microcosm, visualized with different approximation in his works. Benjamin Volckaerts, on the contrary, is constructing his own reality, following the way of transformation from imagination and fantasy to the shapes, characters, and objects.

The distinctive feature and at the same time the way of creating the works of both authors is the change, combination and transformation of forms and materials

Cosmoscow Art Fair, Futuro Gallery, Moscow, Russia, 2023

Andrey Berger's project explores the intermittent nature of evolution, drawing parallels between biological and historical upheavals where collapses lead to sudden, unpredictable transformations. While humanity often rationalizes past disasters, it struggles to foresee future shifts. Unlike typical artistic research, Berger’s approach avoids scientific explanations—his graphic works depict enigmatic biological processes, resembling artifacts from a post-catastrophe lab, leaving interpretation open and emphasizing the mystery of evolutionary and historical change.