News
07.12.2016
Custot Gallery Dubai exhibits the sculpture "79.5° Arc x 9" by Bernar Venet at Abu Dhabi
Custot Gallery Dubai is pleased to announce the six months installation of the sculpture 79.5° Arc x 9 by Bernar Venet at Plaza Manarat Al Saadiyat in Abu Dhabi.
This installation is part of the program Beyond, a public art platform curated by Fabrice Bousteau for large-scale sculptures and installations from the participating Modern & Contemporary galleries, which engages with the city public spaces for six months.
Certainly I am rooted in the tradition of abstract art, or to be more exact, concrete art - an art form which resists any kind of subordination to the natural, the unessential, the similar and the transcendendent in order to allow the artwork to attain its unique and distinctive quality.
Frank Stella's dictum “what you see is what you see“ or Donald Judd's “specific objects“ also form part of this tradition.
Even today I draw upon this rounded, basic concept in my artistic work. My objective is to limit the interpretational possibilities to ensure that my work is perceived in its actual physical reality, or to quote the famous phrase, that it is perceived as a “real object in a real world”’ (Bernar Venet)
‘The artist has managed to find just the right material, thickness and scale to make the arc remain what it was when he began to use it in his work: an unequivocal gesture, intended solely to mark a surface. Even materialized in steel, the arc is undirectional and tends to transform its surroundings into an image, a picture.’ (Extract from Uncompromising Lines by Catherine Millet)
‘It seems as if Venet were playing with the massive, large-scale steel sculptures as a graphic artist does with paper and pen. Usually weighing tonnes, his works cannot be moved without the aid of heavy machinery. Yet they are still possessed of a lightness, like beings suddenly infused with life.’ (Walter Smerling)
