Hotel in the 6th arrondissement, Hotel Madison
Bertrand Lavier was born in France in 1949, and lives in Paris and Burgundy. Influenced by the work of Marcel Duchamp and the New Realists, Lavier has, since the 1970s, questioned the status of the artwork, the ambiguity of objects and the transforming role played by the place where the artwork is exhibited.
Artistic categories are the subject of an approach which raises the question of the painted pedestal, hybridisation, etc. So, he applies thick coats of paint to objects like cars, cupboards and refrigerators, leaving them still usable. The works are then both the object itself and the image of the object. Developing this idea, Lavier superimposes and combines objects, repaints mirrors and paintings, continually questioning the conditions of the (re)presentation. Lavier has fallen under the spell of Manet’s.
Bertrand Lavier (born in 1949)
Shop window – Rue de Sévigné
2005
Ink jet printing on canvas
H. 160 ; L. 203 cm
Artist’s collection
Courtesy of the Kewenig Gallery, Cologne
© ADAGP, Paris, 2008
Source: Musée d’Orsay