Bernar Venet
31 January - 11 March 2006
Gow Langsford Gallery were pleased to present Bernar Venet's first solo exhibition in New Zealand. The exhibition included five sculptures from Venet’s highly recognised Indeterminate Line and Arc series.
French born, Venet has based himself between both Europe and New York City since 1967. Exhibiting since 1968, his works have been shown in major museums across Europe, the USA and Asia. Public sculptures have been commissioned and installed in equally as many varied locations including Cologne, Japan, Norway, Luxembourg and Chicago, among many others.
Venet’s minimalist sculptures stem from his academic investigations into science and mathematics, which are translated into large-scale steel forms: arcs, angles, poles and twisted lines, all precariously balanced. This exhibition included works weighing up to 4 tonnes.
“Bernar Venet seems to be the most intellectual of conceptual artists, but his intellectuality is a means to a romantic end - what Kant called “the feeling of the sublime.” Venet has had a life-long affair with mathematics, but the mathematical murals - his descriptive term - that are its grand climax, are more sublime than mathematical, or rather use mathematics as a springboard to the sublime. They are in fact an inspired rendering of what Kant called ‘the mathematically sublime’.” Donald Kuspit
In 2004 Venet held three simultaneous solo exhibitions in New York City - at the Robert Miller Gallery, Jim Kempner Fine Art in Chelsea, and three large-scale Indeterminate Line pieces on the Park Avenue Malls.
In early 2005 Venet was awarded France’s highest decoration, Chevalier de la Legion d’Honneur, for his enhancement to the reputation of France through arts. His sculptures continue to tour Europe and North America, with recent exhibitions in Ceryg-Pontoise, France, Knookke-Heist, Belgium and downtown Chicago.