Bernar VENET
(born in 1941)
The engineer of mastered chaos
“I want science to become aesthetic”
WHY IS HE FASCINATING?
It is the artist who brings together mathematics, steel and emotion.
He made science an art form.
A minimalist, scientific, yet vibrant sculpture. Arcs, lines, and volumes in Corten steel or matte black.
His famous indeterminate lines – arches, beams, beams – bring to mind giant equations, physical tensions, structures ready to collapse but which hold.
A VERY CURRENT WORK
His art is rational on the surface but deeply sensitive.
It is emotional architecture: arches stretched like nerves, raw steel, black, industrial, latent energy.
His art is a sculpture of tension, between fall and balance.
It's conceptual abstraction in steel. It dares to be cold and unstable without pathos. It pushes us to think about what a line, a form, a force is.
WHY IS IT PRESENTED HERE?
Because he is a philosopher of steel; he worked in mathematics, physics and art at the same time.
A friend of Donald Judd, Arman, Spoerri, Klein, he is one of the great initiators of Minimal and Conceptual Art.
Because he is a living classic of the global market whose monumental works are installed in the great squares of the world, whose works on paper or intermediate formats are sought after.
Where to see it?
- Pompidou Center, Paris
- MoMA, New York
- Guggenheim, New York
- Palace of Versailles (2011 exhibition)
- Venet Foundation, Le Muy (Var, France)