BERTRAND LAVIER

Among Bertrand Lavier’s most emblematic works are his “objets peints,” (painted objects) in which he applies thick, expressive brushstrokes directly onto industrially produced objects — refrigerators, cameras, tables — coating them in paint that evokes gestural abstraction while leaving their functional form entirely visible. With works such as Charles Eames Chair (2002) or SMEG (2002), Lavier disrupts the hierarchy between modernist painting and everyday commodities. By painting the object rather than depicting it, he short-circuits traditional representation and transforms the pictorial act into both surface and subject.

In 1986, Bertrand Lavier painted the window of Lucio Amelio’s Pièce Unique gallery, located rue Jacques-Callot in Paris, turning the gallery’s façade into an artwork, thus activating the window as both surface and sign, extending his exploration of painting’s physical presence into the public realm.

Today, at MASSIMODECARLO Pièce Unique, Bertrand Lavier continues to question conventions of exhibition and perception, turning the painterly gesture itself into an artwork.

Installed in the window, Brushstroke n.7 is a sinuous steel bar, fixed to the wall at a single point, representing a brushstroke. This new work reveals the core tension that runs through Lavier’s practice: the transformation of a Pop-inflected image into a sculptural object.

Brushstroke n.7 does not simply cover a surface—it gives new—both literal and figurative—dimension to the artist’s emblematic gesture: the painted stroke.

Extracted from the flatness of the canvas, this gesture—synonymous with artistic creation—is no longer a mere sign on a surface but a physical entity transposed into real space: a gesture turned form.

Brushstroke n.7 introduces a dialogue with the legacy of Roy Lichtenstein’s Brushstrokes. While Lichtenstein transformed the expressive mark into a Pop image—a stylized, reproducible sign—Lavier pushes the gesture toward undeniable materiality.

Brushstroke n.7 possesses volume, weight, and presence, anchoring the painted sign in the tangible world.

The viewer is invited to experience this shift directly: the evolution of a flat, malleable stroke from medium to subject, from painted fiction to sculptural fact.

Courtesy MASSIMODECARLO.