Brushstroke n.7
Since the late 1960s, Bertrand Lavier has developed one of the most incisive and influential bodies of work in contemporary art. Emerging in the wake of postwar movements that questioned authorship and representation, Lavier’s practice deliberately collapses distinctions between painting and sculpture, object and artwork, readymade and gesture.
This presentation at MASSIMODECARLO Pièce Unique marks his second in the space, and sixth personal exhibition with the gallery.
Among Bertrand Lavier’s most emblematic works are his “objets peints,” (painted objects) in which he applies thick, expressive brushstrokes directly onto industrially produced objects — refrigerators, cameras, tables — coating them in paint that evokes gestural abstraction while leaving their functional form entirely visible. With works such as Charles Eames Chair (2002) or SMEG (2002), Lavier disrupts the hierarchy between modernist painting and everyday commodities. By painting the object rather than depicting it, he short-circuits traditional representation and transforms the pictorial act into both surface and subject.
In
1986, Bertrand Lavier painted the window of Lucio Amelio’s Pièce Unique
gallery, located rue Jacques-Callot in Paris, turning the gallery’s façade into
an artwork, thus activating the window as both surface and sign, extending his
exploration of painting’s physical presence into the public realm.
Today,
at MASSIMODECARLO Pièce Unique, Bertrand Lavier continues to question
conventions of exhibition and perception, turning the painterly gesture itself
into an artwork.
Installed
in the window, Brushstroke n.7 is a sinuous steel bar, fixed to the wall
at a single point, representing a brushstroke. This new work reveals the core
tension that runs through Lavier’s practice: the transformation of a
Pop-inflected image into a sculptural object.
Brushstroke
n.7
does not simply cover a surface—it gives new—both literal and figurative—dimension
to the artist’s emblematic gesture: the painted stroke.
Extracted
from the flatness of the canvas, this gesture—synonymous with artistic
creation—is no longer a mere sign on a surface but a physical entity transposed
into real space: a gesture turned form.
Brushstroke
n.7
introduces a dialogue with the legacy of Roy Lichtenstein’s Brushstrokes.
While Lichtenstein transformed the expressive mark into a Pop image—a stylized,
reproducible sign—Lavier pushes the gesture toward undeniable materiality.
Brushstroke
n.7
possesses volume, weight, and presence, anchoring the painted sign in the
tangible world.
The
viewer is invited to experience this shift directly: the evolution of a flat,
malleable stroke from medium to subject, from painted fiction to sculptural
fact.
The Artist
Bertrand Lavier (b. 1949, Châtillon-sur-Seine, France) is a French artist based in Paris and Burgundy. As a seminal figure in the movement towards appropriation art in the 1980s and 1990s, Bertrand Lavier is perhaps best known for his readymades, created by covering everyday industrial objects such as refrigerators, tables, pianos, and furniture with an impasto layer of paint. He appropriates ubiquitous objects and images in order to reposition them as elements in a strategic critique of consumerism, deeply entrenched visual habits, and art institutions. Fiercely critical of the fetishization of the art object, Lavier considers his work only fully realized as an exhibition—as a constellation of works that generate meaning exclusively through their interrelationships.
His works can be found in major public collections, including those of the Centre Pompidou in Paris, MOCA Grand Avenue in Los Angeles, National Museum of Modern Art Tokyo in Tokyo, and Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam.