Bernar Venet, 1961—2021 60 Years Of Sculpture, Painting & Performance

About

Bernar Venet, 1961—2021. 60 Years of Sculpture, Painting & Performance is the internationally renowned French artist’s largest and most comprehensive retrospective in the world to date, spanning the entirety of his complex and widely diverse oeuvre as a sculptor, painter, performance artist – and radical conceptual artist. The exhibition will bring together over 150 works, reflecting the artist’s uncompromising approach and natural obsession in constantly shaping his environment through his art. On view from January 29 – May 30, 2022, the show is the first in a series of exhibitions to unfold over the next two years across the spectacular 8,000 sqm hangars 2 and 3 of Berlin’s emblematic Tempelhof Airport. 

Organized by the Stiftung für Kunst and Kultur, curated by Walter Smerling, Bernar Venet, 1961—2021 charts the trajectory of the artist’s career from his very beginnings in his studio, which was made available to him by the French army during his military service, and which form the cornerstone of a body of work that has repeatedly called itself into question. Venet has consistently affirmed his concept of art as an attitude which extends far beyond the formal and the spatial. His aspirations to this day are firmly rooted in the unbounded desire to simply never accept the world as it is, instead lending it his own perspective. Landscapes and spaces suddenly assume a new dimension, allowing the observer to view, and feel, differently the energetically charged space in which his signature steel lines, arcs and angles are installed.

Throughout the course of exhibition Venet will activate the space with on-site performances, including Domino Effondrement, first performed in 2021 at the Venet Foundation (Le Muy, France), and in which he uses a forklift to trigger the collapse of a seemingly random array of Corten steel arcs – weighing over 30 tons – leaving them scattered across the floor, as order and chance grow inextricably bound together in this clearly visible accident. Also presented, the remake of The Steel Bar and the Pictorial Memory of the Gesture performance use the line as a tool to intersect the mediums of performance, painting, and sculpture. Using a steel beam, Venet and his performers apply paint to the surface of the gallery wall. Calling to mind the subtle asymmetry of inkblots used during The Rorschach Test, the work pushes the boundaries of Venet’s exploration of line, angles, and rotation by demonstrating how the body can be used as a tool to bring the mathematical concept of the line to life.