" By systematically using all artistic media, I was looking to transcend the notion of ‘style’, substituting it with a ‘work context’. I felt my propensity for this ‘artistic behaviour’ greatly exceeded the limits of a simple ‘pictorial activity’. "
Given the spirit of the times, the career that Bernar Venet started in the early 1960s lies well outside the predictable. Without any real artistic training, equipped only with a vague knowledge of the avant-garde, Venet became an artist under rather harsh circumstances. He trades traditional art materials for industrial supplies. He abandons the canvas for corrugated cardboard, crushed packaging thrown in the trash, or papers of varying sizes. He uses his feet as a brush to apply the bitumen, letting the thick liquid run over the surface on the ground. It is an art focused on operating methods to ensure a random and unpredictable overall effect, which is reminiscent of the gestural creations of the artists of the Gutai group. Venet affirms the reality of his materials by denying them any power of transubstantiation. Matter is matter, technique is technique.