Bernar VENET

Known worldwide for his monumental steel sculptures, Bernard Venet has displayed his works publicly in cities such as New York, Paris, Nice, Berlin, Tokyo, Pekin, Austin and San Francisco. He has participated in Documenta de Kassel and in historic exhibitions alongside the “Nouveaux Réalistes” in the late 1960s. Venet also represented France in various Biennales.
His oeuvre includes all kinds of media, from drawings and photographs to blow-ups and steel sculptures, but they all share a common ground in their color, which is black. Venet was so obsessed by black that he created his first works, in the early 1960s, with tar. He gained fame in 1963 when he debuted a sculpture, lacking any specific form, which consisted of a pile of coal spilled on the ground.

In 1966, Venet moved to New York and acquainted with conceptual artists like Kossuth, Burn and Ramdsen. He produced several equation paintings governed by a monosemic code. He utilized mathematic code to represent functions and tangents. Set against colored backgrounds, these works created a new visual language charged with meaning.
In 1983, Venet turned away from conceptual art and took up sculpture, playing with space while remaining true to his mathematical foundation and line plots. His sculptural works are divided in two series: the determinate lines (arcs, angles and diagonals) made of steel Cor Ten, which responds to a mathematical equation; and, after 6 years of silence and reflection, a series of indeterminate lines in crude steel and full XC10, which are devoid of coercion and play on the mathematical paradox of the completion and continuation of the line in space. Each sculpture, fully created by Venet, is composed of a single room, with its identity (name and degree) marked on the side wall. In the 2000s, Venet reinitiated an old project of self portraits using medical imagery, and also renewed his interests in equation paintings, completing his “Saturations”.

Yves Malrin

Selected Works

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Selected Exhibitions

Bernar Venet Jun 1, 2011 - Nov 7, 2011 Versailles, France