Bertrand Lavier

(French, b. 1949)

Biography

Lavier’s investigations started as a young artist in the late sixties. Puzzling questions presented themselves to him: when is an object a decorative item or well-designed functional tool; when is it considered a work of art; and is there a stage where it shifts from one to the other. To experiment with the dividing lines he covered grand pianos, kettles and other day-to-day objects in thick layers of colourful acrylic paint leaving them both functional, in theory, and completely useless because of the heavy paint. Other times he would stack painted objects, putting a fridge on top of a large safe, making the fridge challenging to use as it was too high above the floor, while the safe was still at a managing level. With two objects stacked, the safe could now be seen as a pedestal and the fridge a sculpture, or was the painted fridge actually a painting? The context in which the objects were placed and observed was the key for Lavier’s conceptual journey.

The discovery of a Walt Disney’s story, where Mickey Mouse derails an art heist in a museum, caught Lavier’s attention in the eighties. Not much for the story itself but for the backdrop. Set amongst abstract metal sculptures and paintings inspired by the Minimalists and Expressionists of the seventies, the Italian comic artist Sergio Asteriti complemented Disney’s story brilliantly by filling it with clichés. To children and most other readers this was exactly what a museum should look like: strange, rounded objects with holes in the middle - and hanging on the walls, paintings of dots, random lines and splashes of paint on canvases. It was simply too perfect. Purely from intuition, and with not a single work copied from a real artist, Asteriti curated a complete museum show filled with works of art living up to the reader’s expectation.

As much as the work from the series ‘Walt Disney Production’ is easy to connect to, the artist’s philosophical question always lurks in the background. What defines an object is based on its context - and once the context change, the perception of it changes as well. This is the true strength of Lavier’s conceptual practice.

The inclusion in the 7th Biennale in Paris in 1971 marked the beginnings of Bertrand Lavier’s artistic journey. During the next five decades his sculptures, paintings and photographs have been exhibited widely through solo- and group shows and events in the art calendar, including Documenta and several biennales around the world. In 1998 the acclaimed works from ‘Walt Disney Production’ were shown as part the ‘Premises’ exhibition at the Solomon Guggenheim Museum in Soho, New York. The artist lives and works in Paris, France.