BERNAR VENET PHOTOGRAPHIES
Author: BERNAR VENET
Publisher: Éditions Marval / Rue Visconti
Bernar Venet, celebrated worldwide for his sculpted works, monumental pieces in corten steel, has practiced photography throughout his career. In series, on the margins, this photographic medium has been the vector of several plastic explorations, the history of which this book, a kind of catalogue raisonné, will set.
The Macadams originated in 1961, when at the age of 19 he was walking near Marseille: he observed a solidified tar drip on the sides of a cliff... which he photographed to memorize this random event. Two years later, he worked with tar on canvases and took a set of photographs of macadam that constitute this first series on the material, while the Rolled Steel series was created by observing metal fusions, a familiar material for the sculptor he is.
The result of his taste for experimentation, he created the series PhotoFax (progressive erasure of the image by successive fax transmissions) and Saturations (graphic project of progressive superimposition of several pages of a dictionary, one on top of the other, the accumulation of successive layers resulting in deep black).
Curious about science and technology, Bernar Venet also explores the sophisticated photographic means of the most advanced scientific laboratories: he creates a series of elementary particles in motion in the synchrotron (In the Bubble Chambers) or photographs the invisible (Plasma in the Tokamak), images created by magnetic fields generated by very powerful superconducting magnets...
Throughout his life, Bernar Venet has also created black and white portraits, of his relatives as well as artists and friends he associates with: Man Ray, Andy Warhol, Richard Serra, Arman, Christo... but also Black Portraits, almost invisible, in silver or polaroid, made in absolute darkness, which seem almost uniformly black and where only a faint glow allows one to distinguish a profile, a presence. « The only thing that matters is that between this black and the lens, he [the photographed] was really there... » says Bernar Venet about them.
Bernar Venet and Hans Ulrich Obrist (exhibition curator, critic, and historian) engage in a dialogue about the artist's photographic practice.
Damarice Amao (doctor in art and photography history, photography historian) traces the genealogy of monochrome photography, putting Bernar Venet's photographic work into perspective.
- Year
- 2022
- ISBN
- 978-2-86234-473-7
- Pages
- 372
- Price
- 45.50 EUR — In stock
From the same publisher
- CRESCENDO
- PER BARCLAY, PHOTOGRAPHE
- Afrikan Matricule
- ADEL ABDESSEMED, catalogue raisonné des cartons d’invitation
- LA DAME D'ONZE HEURES
- TABLEAUX VIVANTS
Book categories
