Bernar Venet
Digital Art Studio
EVENT: Exploring Entropy in the digital space w. Generative Art
EVENT is a long-form generative art collection by visionary conceptual artist Bernar Venet. Five hundred algorithmic digital outputs explore the interplay of chance and unpredictability in the digital realm in Venet’s signature style, building upon his seven-decade practice of probing these themes through sculpture, painting, drawing, poetry, sound, design, and photography.
Exploring the Line: A Systematic Approach to Art
Bernar Venet’s artistic practice incorporating the use of Scientific Language and mathematics as representation in conceptual art led to the development of a systematic approach to art that explored the line's potential across mediums. This system focused on straight lines, broken lines (angle), and curved lines, eventually evolving to incorporate points, saturated lines, and the infamous Indeterminate lines seen around the world in the forms of steel sculptures, paintings, reliefs, and more.
"The formulation of objective methods marks the most advanced procedures of Conceptual art and, consequently, become sources of knowledge that art had never hitherto been able to claim. To this end, these developments are quick to refer to other disciplines - scientific disciplines - in which they find models. The way this knowledge is formulated and presented (and this presentation does not compulsorily correspond to a visual arrangement) no longer fulfills, in a concern for rigor, anything except a standard of functional pertinence to the research carried out by the artist. All aesthetic or stylistic exploitation has vanished.
Since his first purely conceptual pieces of 1966, Bernar Venet has passed through the crucial stages enabling art to make these developments. He is among the first to have originated a profound transformation of the function of art."
Since his first purely conceptual pieces of 1966, Bernar Venet has passed through the crucial stages enabling art to make these developments. He is among the first to have originated a profound transformation of the function of art."
—Catherine Millet
Introduction to: « Bernar Venet: the didactic function of Conceptual art,» by Catherine Millet, published in Art International, December 1970
Art's Evolution in the 1960s: Scientific Language and Mathematics as a New Conceptual Canvas
Bernar Venet began the conceptual exploration of Scientific Language and mathematics as conceptual representations in art, developing a systematic approach to his practice that spans mediums from sculpture, and performance, to poetry and photography. Bernar is regarded as one of the most influential conceptual artists of our age and has continuously influenced the progressive definition of art.
Effondrement: The Accident, Entropy, and the introduction of systematic randomness
In 1996, Bernar Venet, through chance exploration, created his first Effondrement composition. Steal machete Lines were stacked against a wall by Bernar; one steal line slipped and fell into the second into the third, and in a moment's time, an accident had created an undeniably unique composition comprised of randomly sorted lines. This accident began a more than two-decade exploration of systematic entropy as it refers to a measure of disorder, randomness, or uncertainty that results from the steel's natural response to gravity and the order and force of Bernar vision.
“It's a battle between the steal and me”
-Bernar Venet
Multi-Media, Digital Art, & the Expansion into Generative art
In 1970, Bernar Venet installed “Stock Market TV,” the first multimedia installation at the MOMA for the Information Exhibition. It was removed by the head curator because the sound and appearance were too progressive for the time. The piece was noted as disturbing to the rest of the exhibition as the reason for its removal. A groundbreaking moment opened the door for the new media movement in future generations.
In 2023, Bernar Venet expanded his systematic exploration of Science and Mathematics in conceptual art with ISOTOPE, an immersive simulation and the first generative art installation by Bernar Venet. Inspired by his early conceptual work, the project explores the tangible meaning of recent research on diffeomorphism by Mathematician Etienne Ghys. Similar to his earlier Diagrams (1966), he incorporated the unambiguous language of mathematics into a completely new form of image-making.
In 2023, Bernar Venet expanded his systematic exploration of Science and Mathematics in conceptual art with ISOTOPE, an immersive simulation and the first generative art installation by Bernar Venet. Inspired by his early conceptual work, the project explores the tangible meaning of recent research on diffeomorphism by Mathematician Etienne Ghys. Similar to his earlier Diagrams (1966), he incorporated the unambiguous language of mathematics into a completely new form of image-making.
Bernar Venet
Digital Art Studio