Bernar Venet at Tempelhof Airport
The exhibition “Bernar Venet, 1961 – 2021. 60 years of performance, painting and sculptures” is the largest retrospective of the French artist worldwide to date
At the end of January, the most ambitious retrospective of French artist Bernar Venet to date opened in the Berlin Tempelhof Airport hangar. Its title, “Bernar Venet, 1961–2021. 60 years of performance, paintings and sculptures” (till May 30, 2022), refers to the artist's creative career which spanned more than fifty years and resulted in a diverse ensemble of works that incorporate a variety of media. More than 150 works are on view. The exhibition brings together Venet’s original paintings, installations, exercises in conceptual art, performance documentations and monumental sculptures both planar and spatial. A catalogue has also been published to accompany the event, the photographed works paired with the artist’s own reflections as well as texts written by other authors on the phenomenon of Venet’s art.
Bernard Venet is one of the most important French artists working today. Among the general public, his name is associated with monumental sculptures. Venet’s sculptural compositions can be seen in leading Western exhibition halls and contemporary art collections, as well as in the public space. His sculpture L’arc Majeur, located on the E411 motorway between Belgium and Luxembourg, is the largest work of public art in Europe. Although he is often described as a sculptor, it is important to note that his works are striking examples of conceptual art rather than purely formalist play in space. The effort to transform physical reality into form, manipulating its structure and its relationship to space, is one of the fundamental principles of his artistic practice. This retrospective demonstrates that for Bernar Venet, the making of art involves things that go beyond the making of matter. To make art is to articulate and transform by involving various disciplines – science, mathematics, music, architecture, physics, geometry, and also what is going on in the media space.
In these difficult times, Arterritory.com presents a photo essay from the exhibition to remind us that art has always had the power to heal and lift the human spirit.
