French artist Bernar Venet is known for his minimalist large-scale steel sculptures, but he has a multi-disciplinary practice. He has also worked across tar, coal, and asphalt.
Pile of Coal
Bernar Venet’s sculpture Pile of Coal (1963) was significant as the first sculpture of its kind, both in terms of its lack of a specific shape and the fact that the coal itself was the work, rather than the material used to make the work. The sculpture could be altered depending on where it was exhibited, and could be exhibited in multiple locations simultaneously.
Drawings
Although he is most famous for his sculptures, Venet’s drawings are integral to his practice and frequently inform his sculptural work. This is exemplified in his ‘Indeterminate Lines’ series, which Venet began in 1979 and marked a turning point in his practice. In the large-scale drawing Indetermined Lines (1987), the adeptness of Venet’s material understanding is demonstrated through the precise curves of the line drawn, in charcoal, pastel, and collage, rather than metal.
Indeterminate Line
Venet’s interest in the line manifests sculpturally in his public sculpture Indeterminate Line (2004) in Denver, U.S.A. In this work, as with several of the artist’s other large-scale metal sculptures, Venet tests the limits of the dense Corten steel in his creation of the perfect curvature of the line that forms the work. The way the work balances in space, making the heavy material seem almost weightless, emphasises the space between the rational and the organic.
Public Commissions
Bernar Venet has public sculptures permanently installed in cities across the world, including Auckland, Austin, Shenzhen, Berlin, Bonn, Denver, Geneva, Neu-Ulm, Nice, Paris, Seoul, Tokyo, Toulouse, and Vancouver. In 2012, Venet collaborated with the car manufacturer Bugatti to create a unique car that was first shown at the Rubell Family Collection at Art Basel Miami.
