Bernar Venet / Carpet ‘Lignes indéterminées’

For several years, Bernar Venet had been considering creating a carpet, imagining a work halfway between his sculptures and the steel furniture he created a few years ago. Taking up the principle of circularity between media, a principle dear to his work and allowing him to skilfully transpose an idea/concept from one medium to another, he sought a floor-based incarnation of his famous Lignes indéterminées, but an embodiment not limited to a simple flat surface, but rather like a sculpture on the floor, whose roundness evokes the artist's Corten steel compositions. This has now been achieved with this imposing three-metre-wide carpet. Based on a Ligne Indéterminée from 2020, reinterpreted by the artist to adapt it to the textile medium, the pattern produces a surprising effect of collapsing lines that seem to overlap, then surge and disappear in an unexpected optical effect, disturbing the vision and defying the laws of perspective.

Attentive to the finish of this production, Bernar Venet followed the manufacturing process with clear principles. The illusion of intersecting steel bars had to

shine through in the space of the carpet itself in order to generate a ‘flat’ volume. Playing on the alternation of materials, wool or silk, on the differences in colours evoking the tones of Corten steel, or on the variations in the height of the threads, in order to better highlight the effects of depth, relief and overlapping of the bars making up the pattern. From silky reddish brown to deep greys with an anthracite hardness, each part of the composition has been designed for its ability to bring out or retain light, thus enhancing the effects of depth and relief.

Made in Portugal using the hand-tufted technique, this carpet was finished piece by piece by hand in order to cut or even out the different heights of the wool and silk threads to better reaffirm the spatial difference between the bars overlapping each other. Without a doubt, this imposing work, produced in a limited edition of 20, will remain, in terms of textile art, an exceptional creation in the artist's practice.

Characteristics:
Hand-tufted carpet, made of wool and silk
Hand-finished and cut
Diameter: 3 metres
Date: 2025
Production: 20 pieces
Price on request