Since the late 1960s, Bertrand Lavier's work has continued to subvert the traditional categories that compartmentalize artistic creation, with the artist exploring the relationships between painting and sculpture, representation and abstraction, life and art. Passing with ease from one medium to another, he continually develops and experiments with strategies of translation, transposition and conversion, ultimately disrupting our familiar ways of perceiving and conceiving art.
Born in 1949 in Châtillon-sur-Seine (France), Bertrand Lavier lives and works in Paris and Aignay-le-Duc, near Dijon (France).
His work has been the subject of numerous solo and group exhibitions around the world: at the Centre Pompidou, the Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris, the Grand Palais, the Louvre, the Musée d'Orsay, the Palais de Tokyo, the Monnaie de Paris, the Château de Versailles, the Vincent van Gogh Foundation in Arles, the Consortium de Dijon, the Tate Gallery and the Serpentine Gallery in London, at the Villa Sauber in Monaco, the BOZAR/Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, the Martin-Gropius-Bau in Berlin, the Haus der Kunst in Munich, the Kunsthalle Fridericianum in Kassel, the Frankfurter Kunstverein in Frankfurt am Main, the Mamco-Museum for Modern and Contemporary Art in Geneva, at the Middelheim Museum in Antwerp, the Kunsthalle in Bern, the Punta della Dogana-Collection Pinault in Venice, the Macro-Museo d'Arte Contemporanea di Roma and the Villa Medici in Rome, the mumok-museum moderner kunst stiftung ludwig wien in Vienna, at the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, the MoMA PS1 and the Swiss Institute in New York, the Museum of Contemporary Art in San Diego, the Espace Louis Vuitton Tokyo, the Maison Hermès Dosan Park in Seoul, the Hong Kong Museum of Art, and the Venice Biennale.
Bertrand Lavier is represented by the kamel mennour gallery in Paris.
Thibaut de Ruyter is a Franco-German critic and curator, who has lived in Berlin since 2001. During the last ten years he has organized exhibitions at the Kunstmuseum Bochum, Museum Kunstpalais in Düsseldorf, Museum Angewandte Kunst in Frankfurt am Main, HMKV in Dortmund, EIGEN+ART Lab and CTM in Berlin, Muzeum Sztuki at Łódź and at the CRP/ in Douchy-les-Mines.
His interests range from new media to spiritualism to "exhibitions that are not exhibitions". Most of his projects are linked to everyday culture, whether pop or underground. He has been the German correspondent for artpress magazine since 2003 and has been a member of aica since 2005.