Bernar Venet
Monumental Sculptures
December 2003 April 2004
Chac Mool Gallery
8920 Melrose Avenue,
West Hollywood, 90069
Phone 310.550.6792
Phone 310.550.6792
Chacmool@earthlink.net
artnet.com/ChacMool.html
Chac Mool Gallery is pleased to announce that nine monumental steel sculptures by Bernar Venet will be featured at Kennedy Park, Miami, from December 2003 April 2004.
As an ensemble, the nine sculptures planned for Kennedy Park surpass, in number and volume, a similar group of the artist’s work which traveled from Paris historic Champ-de-Mars to public and private sites in Hong Kong, Shanghai, Brussels, Cologne, Basel, Brasilia, Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, New Smyrna Beach, Florida, and Park Avenue, New York. The sculptures characterized by the artist as lines in space were produced by Bernar in Hungary, in the Vosges Mountains of France, and in Southern France. All variations on Bernars favorite themes, Arcs, Angles, Diagonals, and Indeterminate Lines, are represented at Kennedy Park, reaching heights ranging from 14 to 55 feet.
While sculpture has been a major form of expression for him, Venet has made pioneering contributions in other media as well, including his early conceptual works and wall drawings and paintings. I produce sculptures for myself, not necessarily because they are commissioned, so I keep my freedom. If you view these sculptures up close, you will see that the arcs, the angle, and the straight line have numbers on them, indicating the number of degrees. Why do I write that? Although my work could be assimilated to a generation of artists involved with a sober esthetic, I am involved in developing a very different category. By the fact that it is related to a language used in mathematics, it functions outside of the usual context of abstraction and figuration. My work is different because when I started in the late 60s, I was using mathematical language in my paintings. People were wondering why, questioning the possible relationship between art and mathematics.
Chac Mool Gallery will also be presenting Bernar Venets mathematical paintings, The Saturation Paintings, at Art Basel Miami Beach, Stand C8.
Bernar Venets monumental sculptures are on view at Kennedy Park, 2200-2221 South Bayshore Drive (at 22nd Avenue), Coconut Grove, Miami, until April 2004. Local TEL: 305-575-5256
