Variations on the Arc 1, 2002

Bernar Venet is a French conceptual artist and has his works displayed around the world. After Bernar Venet completed his military service he began to explore art by working with tar as paint and using coal to create sculptures. He later ventured into using cardboard to make sculptures and his exhibits were placed alongside New Realists and Pop artists work in the Salon Comparaisons in Paris. In the mid-1960's Bernar Venet was influenced by the trend in using typical, simple and massive forms in sculptures. He also became interested in how mathematics and logic could be incorporated into their shapes. Bernar Venet would take several years to put his ideas into art forms. He spent time teaching as he entered a period of retrospection. By the 1980's Bernar Venet was beginning to develop logical lines in his art work and also composed, imagined and choreographed designs and costumes for the production of Graduation, the ballet. He has worked in many mediums; painting, sculpture, music composition, film, photography and the performing arts. Bernar Venet’s most famous designs; however, were created in the 1990's with his pieces, Indeterminate Lines series, the Arcs, Angles and Straight Lines sculptures.Some of these pieces are so large he has to move hundreds of tons by truck to transport them in pieces. They are then reassembled on location based on instability, uncertainty and concepts of disorder. These sculptures are now exhibited at different locations worldwide including Versailles. Bernar Venet’s intention through his art is to raise questions. His pieces bring something new to the art world with the challenge to convince people that anything is possible. His early works with tar were daring and his pile of coal, Tas de Charbon was important for art history as it is the first sculpture not to have a definite form. This was a sculpture that could change in size, shape and volume and still be defined as a sculpture. (Artist website)