Bernar Venet

« - Not virtual.

- Without illusion.

- Without appearance.

- Nor metaphor.

- Self-referential. »


Bernar Venet


This poem of five verses by Bernar Venet serves as a statement. In four negations and one affirmation, the artist describes himself as well as the body of his work in its entirety. To paraphrase Raymond Queneau, we might see in this a small portable cosmology connecting the part (the poem, the painting, or the film) with the whole. Moreover, if we weigh the range of forms his artistic expression has taken, we cannot help but recognize both the intellectual discipline Venet has subjected himself to, and the great coherence that underpins his oeuvre, from its early days to the present.