see

History of the work

At the university's Centre for Sport and Sport Science at Bremgartenstrasse 145 stands “see”, a sculpture of chrome steel from 1972. Like many of his works, Willy Weber shaped it with explosives. The Swiss art lexicon SIKART and Wikipedia list the work among those in public ownership, together with “O.K.” of 1976 in Corten steel, which stands a few metres away on the Neubrückstrasse side. Both lists give the university sports hall Neufeld as the location.

The first explosion sculptures were made in 1962. SIKART describes how precisely Weber worked: he set off charges on the front and back of the metal plates and dosed them so that bulges and openings became predictable. From 1968 he worked with polished chrome steel, which brought him international success; Wikipedia gives 1967 as the start of the chrome plating.

Willy Weber was born in Bern on 16 June 1933 and grew up in Muri. After a commercial apprenticeship and a year in Algeria he taught himself to paint from 1956. In the 1960s he belonged to the Bernese avant-garde around Harald Szeemann, who showed him several times at the Kunsthalle Bern, and to the group “Bern 66”. In 1969 he represented Switzerland at the São Paulo Biennial and in 1972 – the year “see” was made – at the Venice Biennale. In 1971 the Swiss Confederation gave his large chrome-steel relief “Apollo X” to the Kennedy Center in Washington.

Weber died in Boll-Sinneringen on 11 May 1998. According to SIKART, the chrome plating was meant to dematerialise the work, as it were, and to involve viewers, who see their own movements reflected. You can try this on site: walking past the sculpture, you see yourself reflected in its curved chrome surfaces.

Researched and summarised by Bärn Kit. Sources: Kultur Stadt Bern, Kunst im öffentlichen Raum (offene Daten) · SIKART: Willy Weber (Regina Bühlmann) · Wikipedia (de): Willy Weber (Künstler) · Wikimedia Commons: Chromstahlplastik see (Willy Weber 1972)