SOTHEBY’S TO PRESENT AN EXHIBITION OF WORKS BY RENOWNED ARTIST BERNAR VENET AT ISLEWORTH For the first time, Sotheby’s will present an exhibition of a single artist, the renowned sculptor, Bernar Venet, on the lush grounds of the Isleworth Golf & Country Club in Windermere, Florida
News-Antique.com - Jan 04,2008 - EXHIBITION OFFERS RETROSPECTIVE VIEW OF THE ARTIST’S CAREER
New York – For the first time, Sotheby’s will present an exhibition of a single artist, the renowned sculptor, Bernar Venet, on the lush grounds of the Isleworth Golf & Country Club in Windermere, Florida, outside Orlando. From January through April 2008, approximately twenty-five monumental sculptures will showcase the artist’s work of the last two decades, highlighting some of his most distinctive themes. These include Arcs, Straight Lines, Angles and Indeterminate Lines, many of them for sale. Executed by Venet at a foundry and ironworks in the Vosges mountains, they range in size from 6 to 35 feet, and have been referred to as “drawings in space.” Venet’s bold sculptures have been exhibited in galleries, museums and public places around the world, from Paris to Nice, Madrid to Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires to Tel Aviv, Berlin to Hong Kong, Seoul to Shanghai. In the United States, his work has been prominently seen in New York, Washington D.C., Miami, San Francisco, Denver, Austin and Chicago.
Bernar Venet said, “I’m thrilled with Sotheby’s offer to present some of my more important, recent works in the spectacular setting they have chosen. For an artist like myself, living in both the United States and Europe, Sotheby’s Worldwide seems the perfect sponsor for an exhibition of this type.”
Stephane Cosman Connery, Director of Private Sales Worldwide and Senior Vice President of Sotheby’s Impressionist and Twentieth Century Art Department, commented: “I have long been a fan of Bernar Venet’s visually arresting work. For our fifth annual sale of monumental sculpture at Isleworth, I thought it would be a wonderful opportunity to give our clients a retrospective glimpse of Venet’s work, the high quality of which was greatly admired by visitors to the previous Isleworth exhibition, resulting in immediate sales. We are thrilled that he has chosen to participate with Sotheby’s on this exciting project, in this magnificent location.”
The approximately twenty-five sculptures on exhibit at Isleworth give an overview of the artist’s work of the last two decades. As a key player in the conceptual art movement of the 1960s and 70s, in which ideas take precedence over forms, Venet evolved a new aesthetic with steel as his medium and mathematic configurations as his subject. In doing so he achieves visual poetry of an abstract kind. In Three Indeterminate Lines, 2003, Three Indeterminate Lines, also 2003, Venet offers variations on a coiled line; in 215.5° Arc x 21, 2005 and 5 Arcs x 5, 2002, he illustrates different ways in which a circle can be left incomplete. Prominently included in this overview is Random Combination of Indeterminate Lines, 1990, consisting of thirty-seven twisted and contorted metal bars in assorted positions, vertical and horizontal.
Bernar Venet
Born in 1941 in Château-Arnoux-Saint-Auban in the Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, France, Venet’s talent was evident in his drawing at an early age. He learned about the work of successful artists through art books that his mother bought him, and he was particularly attracted to
