Live Artist Performance: 29 March 2019, 7 pm
Sotheby’s Hong Kong Spring Sales 2019 Cocktail Reception (By Invitation Only)
Hall 5
Hong Kong Convention & Exhibition Centre
1 Expo Drive, Wan Chai
For details please visit: http://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/2019/contemporary-art-evening-sale-hk0855.html?locale=en
de Sarthe and Sotheby’s are delighted to present a performance by leading contemporary artist Bernar Venet during the Sotheby’s Spring Sales 2019 cocktail reception on 29 March 2019. The new work created and unveiled by the artist during this performance will be auctioned on 1 April 2019 at the Contemporary Art Evening Sale, with all proceeds going to The Foundation for AIDS Research (amfAR).
This will be the first collaboration of its kind between de Sarthe and Sotheby’s and features one of the world’s most significant and influential conceptual artists.
Speaking about the event and performance, Yuki Terase, Sotheby’s Head of Contemporary Art, Asia said:
‘Sotheby’s is delighted to not only offer an outstanding work by Bernar Venet that challenges the traditional boundaries of painting and sculpture, but also to be involved in the performance in which the work is created – a rare occurrence at auction. We are equally thrilled to be supporting a significant charity through this event, amfAR – The Foundation for AIDS Research, to which the sale proceeds will be donated.’
Titled The Steel Bar and the Pictorial Memory of The Gesture, Venet’s performance will showcase his distinctive process which utilises an installed metal bar covered in paint to realise a visual image through his gesture and movements, as well as the particular attributes of the material, the angle of the bar and the fluidity of the paint.
Venet’s artistic career rose to prominence in the 1960s after he moved to New York and began experimenting with the tenets of Minimalism. He is best known for his experimental approach to media and his strong emphasis on process over outcome. He is also recognised for his highly innovative approach to conceptual art and his processes which are often based on mathematical models, and which incorporate industrial materials such as coal, metal, layers of tar on cardboard and large-scale steel installations. This performance continues the artist’s exploration of the dynamics between line and material, form and force, the rational and the organic, and follows his critically acclaimed retrospective at the Musée d’art contemporain de Lyon and MAMAC Nice in October 2018.
Bernar Venet travels especially to Hong Kong for this performance and presents his work in Hong Kong for the third time following shows in Tsim Sha Tsui in 1995 and at the Hong Kong harbour in 2012.
The new site-specific performance works created in Hong Kong will examine and redefine the relationships between performance, sculpture and painting. The work will be entirely unique, incorporating the artist’s distinctive monochromatic aesthetic language and introducing the more unusual element of colour for the first time. Venet also presents his work at de Sarthe for the exhibition In relation: Performance | Sculpture | Painting on display from 27 March to 18 May 2019.
Describing the evolving trajectory of his practice and returning to Hong Kong, Bernar Venet said: “Returning to Hong Kong in such a great context - at the time of the most prestigious Art Fair in Asia - is a unique opportunity for an artist to present a group of works mainly unknown to a large public. I will present works that simultaneously involve the mediums of Performance, Sculpture and Painting.”