134.5° Arc

Bernar Venet (Château-Arnoux-Saint-Auban, France, 1941)
Commissioned by: Société académique de Genève

Bernar Venet’s sculpture is an arc springing from the ground, standing like a minimalist totem in the middle of a sober, broad esplanade. The curved stem made of steel soars up high and marks the frontispiece of a building that is essential to the life of the city: the university. A sign and reference point made of clean lines, the arc merges with the urban context, while pinpointing a strategic location. The monumental, slender arc extends in harmony with the height and scale of the Uni-Mail building. Commissioned by the Société académique de Genève, the work was specifically created for this site and offered to the University of Geneva on the occasion of the centenary of the Société. As usual, the artist engraved the work’s mathematical formula upon it: 134.5° Arc, the sculpture’s arc also becoming its title. For several years, Bernar Venet has been developing a sculptural work involving geometric shapes based on straight and curved lines. In the 1960s, he took part in some of conceptual art’s most radical experiments, and this led him to develop an artistic and formal approach rooted in mathematical theories and diagrams. It is this simplicity, borne of a working method based on rational principles and devoid of all emotion, that gives 134.5° Arc its simultaneously austere and majestic appearance.
Article commissioned by P3Art
Notice: Séverine Fromaigeat, translation: Matthew Cunningham