Macadam 1963, Bernar Venet

From 1961 to 1963, Bernar Venet produced a number of works based on a “principle of equivalence” that enabled him to convey the same content through different media, with the color black as a common thread, this black embodying the refusal of easy communication while praising a form of austerity in opposition to the emerging figuration and dazzling lyrical abstraction of the 1960s. This decade was marked by a radical approach based on constant experimentation, leading to new typologies of sculptural, pictorial, sound and photographic works characterized by neutrality, serial production and the rejection of composition.

For Bernar Venet, photography is indeed necessarily conceptual and experimental. It was photography that enabled him to make his very first artwork (Performance dans les détritus) in 1961. In 1963, he created a photographic series, Macadam Noir, based on close-ups of tarred ground. Conceived as a continuation of his early black monochrome paintings and his Tars, this series is part of this extremely prolific context, and breaks with the use of photography hitherto employed as a means of documenting or bearing witness to an event.

Limited edition of 150

Process Editions, 2024
Text in French
Soft cover
22 x 18 cm
32 pages
ISBN: 978-2-9587996-5-6