Fountain

source: showmeuk

Celebrated French artist Bertrand Lavier, renowned for his inspirational sculptures made from assembled and modified found objects, has been commissioned by the Serpentine to create a fountain within the grounds of the Serpentine Sackler Gallery. Following Rock On Top of Another Rock by Fischli/Weiss the fountain is part of the Serpentine’s ongoing outdoor commissions in Kensington Gardens and will be in situ for one year. Bertrand Lavier’s Fountain is a playful interpretation of this most traditional of garden features; instead of a classical sculpture of a figure or natural form, the jets of water emanate from an apparently unruly mass of garden hoses..
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source: xavierhufkens

Although French post-modern philosophers had a profound impact on American art during the 1980s, concepts such as simulacra and appropriation had less of an influence in their country of origin. The work of Bertrand Lavier, however, is an exception. Thanks to the heritage of Marcel Duchamp and the Nouveaux Réalistes, Lavier was able to give the art of the found object a typical French touch. Since the late 1960s, Lavier has reflected upon the relationship between painting and sculpture, representation and abstraction, life and art. An overriding characteristic of his work is its tongue in cheek attitude. In order to shape his ideas, Lavier developed a series of ‘demonstrations’: methods and strategies that enable him to question our intellectual baggage and to disrupt our most entrenched visual habits. His best-known intervention is to cover everyday objects with what he refers to as typical ‘Van Gogh-brushwork’. With this act, banal objects become artworks but, even more importantly, the object becomes a painted image of itself. Paradoxically, the representation of reality only occurs when the original object is hidden from view and completely disappears. Another ‘demonstration’ consists of combining two different objects in an absurd associative manner, such as a sculpture of Alexander Calder placed upon a radiator with an identical brand name, or La Bocca (Dali’s famous lip-shaped sofa) balanced upon a white freezer manufactured by Bosch.

Bertrand Lavier had a major retrospective at the Centre Pompidou, Paris, in 2012. Recent projects include En résonance avec la Biennale d’art Contemporain de Lyon at the Musée d’Art Moderne de St Etienne, France (2011) and Afternoon, at Tsum, Moscow and the Hermes Museum in Seoul, Korea (2010). In 2008, his work was shown at the Musée d’Orsay, Paris, in Musée Correspondances. Bertrand Lavier/Edouard Manet.

Betrand Lavier was born in Châtillon-sur-Seine, France, in 1949.
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source: artsynet

As a seminal figure in the movement toward 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.
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source: serpentinegalleriesorg

Bertrand Lavier had a major retrospective at the Centre Pompidou, Paris, in 2012. Recent projects include En résonance avec la Biennale d’art Contemporain de Lyon at the Musée d’Art Moderne de St Etienne, France (2011) and Afternoon at Tsum, Moscow and the Hermes Museum in Seoul, Korea (2010). In 2008, his work was shown at the Musée d’Orsay, Paris, in Musée Correspondances. Bertrand Lavier/Edouard Manet.