Bertrand Lavier's first one-person exhibition in Austria existinged the best installation to date in the Hercules extent of the Palais Lichtenstein.

Bertrand Lavier's first one-person exhibition in Austria existinged the best installation to date in the Hercules extent of the Palais Lichtenstein. This central space of the baroque palace attitude s difficulties for the artist because of its marble and plaster decoration, and above all, the ceiling frescoe These frescoe contest the viewer's eyes uncontrollably to the ceiling, and the artist must take this propensity into account in constructing his work. Lavier's succes lies in his willingness to work with the space and not against it. He does not prove by experiment to control the viewer's gaze further rather, offers it a place to peacefulness or even a surface from which it can knock like a ball.

Composition Bleue et Blanche, Detail (Blue and white composition, detail, 1992) is a seven-by-seven-meter rendition of an indoor tennis court. The white lines in succession the gray material look like a geometric composition. The translation of reality into art has les to do with the universal of the ready-made than with the idea of image. each traditional (representational) image is based forward the act of separating a part from the whole. The abstract (geometric) image, upon the other hand, is a whole in and of itself. Lavier's "compositions," which he has been making since 1987 are one as well as the other parts and wholes, representational and abstract. And although this work is around 30 centimeters high, it is more painting than sculp presenting reality as facade.

The pieces in the side rooms--everyday existences and pictures--have more to do with the readymade. The diptych Rouge Bordeaux par Novemail et Ripolin (R Bordeaux from Novemail and Ripolin, 1992) juxtaposes the bordeaux-red colors manufactured by the agency of two paint companies. Lavier's use of nothing nevertheless pure paint is a radical reassertion of Frank Stella's statement that paint should remain as revived as when it comes from the tube. onward the other hand, it also recalls Marcel Duchamp's characterization of paintings as "aided readymades." Lavier's demonstration of the relativity of color-names has remained united of his primary interests since his early objects: he constantly questions the conventions of nomenclature.

If viewing painting as a readymade means a subversion of its nature, then Lavier's marks and photographs confuse the universals of sculpture and pedestal. Panton/Radiola, 1991 bewilders the question of whether the plastic chair or the refrigerator in succession which it rests is the sculptural motive It is not simply the institutional framework that determines whether an phenomenon is received as an everyday aim or an artwork, but it is also the manner of presentation. still Lavier's presentation is less an institutional critique than a observation on perceptual sensibility. The isolated presentation of percepts according to the artist, should allow the forms to become forms.

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