Published for the Bertrand Lavier exhibition at Yvon Lambert Gallery, Paris, in 2000.
Born in France in 1949, Bertrand Lavier has acquired a prominent place in the contemporary
art world. Influenced by Duchamp and the
Nouveaux Réalistes, his witty artworks disturb our
routine ways of perceiving and conceiving art. They reassess our visual and intellectual
education and impel the viewer to see how mundane objects can be transformed into
authentic artworks. The artist reveals all the stages of this transitivity between life and art, he
shows how an institution, a place of exhibition, a pedestal, the act of painting a surface are
different factors in the same process. His painted objects, his repainted mirrors, and tableaux
d'ameublements ("fitment paintings") instigate a reconsideration of the relationship between
art and reality.
