Bertrand Lavier at the Bourse de Commerce

In one of the twenty-four windows of the Bourse de Commerce, under the spectacular dome from the 1800s, a fire extinguisher, covered with a layer of paint, becomes art, thank to what the French architect Bertrand Lavier ironically called his “touch of Van Gogh”. An object from the Walt Disney Productions series, green and in a form of Pop Art, rising from a pedestal, backing up the lashing of Lavier of our preconceptions and the artist’s invitation to abandon the commonplace. Until the 1st of July, the Collection Pinault offers an original and playful personal exhibition with distinct touches of Duchamp, dedicated to Bertrand Lavier. On the other hand, since his first works, created when he was a student of horticulture, fascinated by the concept of transposition, grafting and the hybridisation of heterogenous elements, Lavier offers moments of reflection, dominating, starting in the ‘80s, the European artistic scene, using his “building sites” to spread his irreverent but refined works far and wide. Mixing painting and sculpture, turning genres and the categories of art history upside-down, Lavier marries heterogenous elements, activating the hidden meanings and paradoxical sides of things. Appreciated for his capacity to transform a common object into a piece of art, the architect shows objects and forms from daily life and art history, playing with these to the point of questioning their values through assemblage. Puzzles, superimpositions and inversions take the object out of its original functional dimension, transforming it into a sign, physical matter for thought. Thus, the artist manages to explore the nature of the work itself, touching notions, such as the artist’s signature, painting, the artistic gesture, the concept of originality.