Bertrand Lavier

Born in 1949 in Chatillon-sur-Seine (France), he lives and works in Paris.

Bertrand Lavier's work since the 1970s has mischievously questioned aesthetic categories and hijacked language and logic. From the objects he covers with a thick layer of paint "à la Van Gogh" to those he assembles in an incongruous manner, his work pursues a project around representation and its declensions, with an attention to cultural symbols.

His Bandes-Amorces (1991-2000), photographs made at random to prime the film, are a snub to the idea of photography as the art of framing and as a sensitive surface, and come as a counterpoint to the very purpose of the exhibition. In black and white or in colour, these photographs dialogue with the Warsteiner installation (1997), a hot-air balloon spread out on the ground with the "arms" of the famous beer, like a deflated belly or an aerial vessel in need of wind.