Bernar Venet

Arcs

Paul Kasmin Gallery

New York, 515 West 27th Street

Bernar Venet has been one of the most particular contemporary sculptors since 1960s, fostering a deep personal relationship with materials, forms, and, craftsmanship through a philosophical and mathematical lens. His mellowly circular sculptures that rely on the rigidness of steel convey the poeticism beneath industrial aesthetic. After the French artist spent the early stage of his career experimenting with rough and tactile materials such as tar, coal, and asphalt, Venet delved into contemplative and mathematic tone of Minimalism,alongside his fellow artist Arman, under the influence of Minimalists of New York where the artist visited in the late ‘60s. 

Bernar Venet, Arcs, 2016 Oilstick, graphite and collage on paper Photo/ Copyright The Artist Courtesy of Paul Kasmin Gallery

Works on view at Paul Kasmin Gallery’s tenth avenue location are three new sculptures accompanied by six large scale drawings, reaching to seven feet in height, complimented by an essay Carter Ratcliff penned for the exhibition. While Venet’s sculptures and drawings compete in height and visual force, their harmony in terms of transferring mental transcendence and artistic maturity orchestrates a unity. Six feet tall sculptures blanketed by black patina contain the flexible rotundity and optic completeness, yet their magnificent presence and clear-cut industrial precision amaze the viewers standing aside. 

“The aesthetics I am most interested in is the one that remains to be discovered, the one whose meaning needs still to be formulated: all these objects or phenomena that I am not yet sensitive to, that surround me without my even taking notice; objects or events that remain foreign to me, to which I am deaf or blind, like those people who pass by an Ad Reinhardt without feeling its charge. The aesthetic sense allows me to move to another level of perception,” said the artist in an interview with Laura Tansini in 2004 for Sculpture Magazine.  

Arcs will be on view at Paul Kasmin Gallery until April 22, 2017