Bertrand Lavier

Born in Châtillon Châtillon-sur-Seine, France. Lives and works in Aignay-le-Duc and Paris, France.

Since the 1960s, Bertrand Lavier has developed a pioneering and internationally-recongised body of work that reflects upong the relationship between representation and abstraction, life and art. Influenced by Marcel Duchamp and the Nouveau Réalisme group, Lavier’s work operates a new form of language which speaks for art itself, questioning codes of artistic representation through a practice that is both highly intellectual and humourous.

Working with media such as sculpture, ready-made, photography and painting, Lavier develops a series of “demonstrations” – acts that question the status quo, from playing with the meaning of a pedestal to covering everyday objects with paint, replicating the so-called “Van Gogh touch”, and thus transforming them into artworks.

Lavier’s work has been widely exhibited in some of the most important museums and biennales globally, from representing France at the Venice Biennale in 1976 to a major retrospective at the Centre Pompidou in Paris in 2012, as well as exhibitions at Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris; Musée du Louvre, Paris; Musée d’Orsay, Paris; Espace Louis Vuitton, Tokyo; Tate Modern, London; Serpentine Gallery, London; Haus der Kunst, Munich; Pinault Collection, Venice and Paris; Museo d’Arte Contemporanea di Roma; State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg; MoMA PS1, New York; Maison Hermès, Seoul; LVMH Foundation, Tokyo, among many others.

His work is part of important collections such as Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Rijsksmuseum, Amsterdam; Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, Turin; National Museum of Modern Art Tokyo (MOMAT), Tokyo; Mamco – musée d ́art moderne et contemporain, Geneva; MOCA Grand Avenue, Los Angeles; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Musée d ́Art Moderne, Paris; Fondation LVMH, Paris; Pinault Collection, Paris, among others.