Now, more than 40 years later, the French artist returns to Venice with a comprehensive solo exhibition on the occasion of the Biennale Arte 2024, which takes a concentrated look at Venet’s radically conceptual beginnings. The show, curated by Prof Beate Reifenscheid, Director of the Ludwig Museum Koblenz, presents an artistic oeuvre far removed from the mainstream of the early 1960s, whose influence on art continues to have an impact to this day.
From 20 April to 16 June 2024, the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana on Piazza San Marco is showing the exhibition “Bernar Venet – 1961… Looking Forward!” in collaboration with the Ministero della Cultura and the Association for Art in Public in its historic Salone Sansoviniano, which can be accessed via the Museo Correr. Here, Venet’s works are placed in an exciting art-historical context with paintings by Titian, Tintoretto and Veronese in one of Venice’s most famous locations.
“Bernar Venet – 1961… Looking Forward!” shows examples of the artist’s famous tar artworks and cardboard reliefs as well as two impressive room installations. As the title of the exhibition suggests, visitors are confronted with Bernar Venet’s artistic beginnings. In 1961, during his military service in Tarascon in the south of France, the then 19-year-old Venet began experimenting with simple, new materials, which became the hallmark of his artistic explorations: Tar and cardboard. Within just two years, he quickly and with great conviction developed the themes that would characterise his artistic work for many years to come, breaking radically new ground in the process. Works such as the Tar Paintings, the Coal Heap (Tas de Charbon) and Taramacadam were created in a short space of time. Even more astonishing than these artistic approaches was the fact that Bernar Venet was already recording his activities in photographs at the time. Practically every action was documented: Tar, which was spread on the edge
of a quarry, the creation of Five India Ink Drawings in Three Seconds (1961) and Venet’s first performance, in which he lies down among the rubbish in the streets of Tarascon.
“A look back at Bernar Venet’s experimental work between 1961 and 1965 undoubtedly confirms the visionary nature of Venet’s art from a very early stage in his career. In their intensity and radical deviation from the beaten track, his consistent performances, lectures and exhibitions have introduced new modes of expression, forms and concepts into contemporary art and still show today how much art changes the perception of each individual. What makes his work lively and touching in form and language, although it is conceptual and abstract, material and dematerialised at the same time, is the fact that it is perceived as a “Gesamtkunstwerk” – a fusion of life and art.
In this sense, looking back to 1961 is also a way of looking forward,” comments Prof Beate Reifenscheid, Director of the Ludwig Museum in Koblenz.
Dirk Geuer, the curator of this year’s exhibition programme at the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana parallel to the Biennale Arte 2024, adds: “Bringing Bernar Venet’s art-historically significant work to a historically important location such as the Biblioteca Marciana has long been a great wish of mine. The juxtaposition of such important works of contemporary art with Renaissance paintings by Titian, Tintoretto and Veronese opens up a dialogue between new and old masters, in which past and present meet at eye level.”
The exhibition enters into a direct dialogue with the 60th Biennale Arte in Venice and impressively demonstrates the topicality and sustainability of Venet’s innovative and non-conformist beginnings, which are fundamental to the understanding of contemporary art.
Exhibition:
Bernar Venet – 1961… Looking Forward!
20 April to 16 June 2024
Salone Sansoviniano in Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana
Access to the exhibition via the Museo Correr
Piazza San Marco n.52 – Ala Napoleonica, I – 30124 Venedig
Opening hours daily 10 am – 6 pm (last admission 5 pm)
Editor’s Tip:
Accompanying publication: Bernar Venet. 1961 – 1965. Hypothesis. Immancence.
230 pages with texts by Bernard Ceysson, Alexandre Devals, Thierry de Duve, Maurice Fréchuret, Déborah Laks, Thierry Lenain, Thomas McEvilley, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Arnauld Pierre, Thierry Raspail, Beate Reifenscheid and Damien Sausset. Editions Bernard Chauveau, Paris, France 2024 (French and English).
