ART CITIES:London-Bertrand Lavier
As a seminal figure in the movement toward appropriation art, Bertrand Lavier is perhaps best known for his readymades, created by covering everyday industrial objects 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.
By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Gallery Kamel Mennour Archive
Bertrand Lavier in his solo exhibition at presents at Gallery Kamel Mennour in London works that belong to one of his most iconic bodies of work “Walt Disney Productions”. The starting point for the project, which began in 1984, is to be found in a Walt Disney comic strip from 1977 at “Le Journal de Mickey” under the French title “Traits très abstraits” in which Mickey and Minnie Mouse visit a modern art gallery. Here, they encounter an array of paintings and sculptures that ingeniously mimic genuine modern and contemporary art (the biomorphic sculptures in the story resemble the work of Jean Arp, for example). Fascinated by this, Lavier started to make life-size replicas of the Disney artworks. Hence his colourful, abstract canvases are directly inspired by the paintings that sprang from the cartoonist’s imagination but which, in their own humorous way, were undoubtedly based upon real works of art. By appropriating the fictitious paintings from the inaccessible, printed page and presenting them as autonomous objects within a real gallery space, Lavier recreates an equivalent viewing experience to that of Mickey and Minnie. This loop calls into question the link between fact and fiction, notably the point as which the simulacrum becomes reality and the representation of modern art in society. Interestingly, the striking simplicity of Lavier’s compositions and the thick, painterly surfaces belie their technical complexity: each canvas incorporates a number of different materials and techniques, ranging from photography to laser-jet and silk-screen printing. By bringing motifs from fantasy and from entertainment culture into Museums and Galleries, Bertrand Lavier plays humorously with the tension between high and low. The artist, who lives in France, focuses on and blurs the borders between the media, between reality and fiction, the two- and the three-dimensional.
Info: Gallerie Kamel Mennour, 51 Brook Street, London, Duration: 4/3-7/4/18, Days & Hours: Mon-Sat 10:00-18:30, www.kamelmennour.com
