De noir à rien (couleur #1)
2003
Unique
The show accommodates Origamis as well as it unveils a new version of the artist's chromatic series. "From Black to nothing": Every new edition of the series reproduces the colour of a preceding exhibition only with a hardly visible modification. It is only by keeping track with the exhibitions that the evolution becomes apparent.
De rouge à rien #6
2002
Unique
Each new presentation of the series "from Red to Nothing" reproduces with a hardly noticeable difference the colour of the latest show, with a slight addition of white. It is only after a certain number of venues that the evolution becomes visible for those who follow the series, doomed for ending in white.
Following the Right Hand of - Lana Turner in “The Postman Always Rings Twice”
2005
Unique
From the beginning of the movie “The Postman Always Rings Twice” to the moment the image was taken, Pierre Bismuth (born in 1963 in Neuilly-sur-Seine, lives and works in Brussels) has carefully followed and retranscribed the right hand movements of Lana Turner, thereby creating a drawing overlaying the original image. Apparently random, this tangle of lines is in fact extremely meaningful and personal, since it captures the gesture of an iconic actress, whose myth the artist approaches subtlty. Bringing together several artistic approaches of the 20th century, from early photographic experiences of decomposing movement to Pablo Picasso's drawings with a flashlight in space and in the dark, from automatic writing to action painting, Bismuth poetically reconciles fixed images and movement.
Following the Right Hand of - Lauren Bacall in “Key Largo”
2005
Unique
From the beginning of the movie "Key Largo" to the moment the image was taken, Pierre Bismuth (born in 1963 in Neuilly-sur-Seine, lives and works in Brussels) has carefully followed and retranscribed the right hand movements of Lauren Bacall, thereby creating a drawing overlaying the original image. Apparently random, this tangle of lines is in fact extremely meaningful and personal, since it captures the gesture of an iconic actress, whose myth the artist approaches subtlty. Bringing together several artistic approaches of the 20th century, from early photographic experiences of decomposing movement to Pablo Picasso's drawings with a flashlight in space and in the dark, from automatic writing to action painting, Bismuth poetically reconciles fixed images and movement.
Following the Right Hand of - Marilyn Monroe in “Some Like It Hot”
2006
400 x 720 centimeters
Unique
Collection Centre Georges Pompidou. From the beginning of the movie "Some Like It Hot" to the moment the image was taken, Pierre Bismuth (born in 1963 in Neuilly-sur-Seine, lives and works in Brussels) has carefully followed and retranscribed the right hand movements of Marilyn Monroe, thereby creating a drawing overlaying the original image. Apparently random, this tangle of lines is in fact extremely meaningful and personal, since it captures the gesture of an iconic actress, whose myth the artist approaches subtlty. Bringing together several artistic approaches of the 20th century, from early photographic experiences of decomposing movement to Pablo Picasso's drawings with a flashlight in space and in the dark, from automatic writing to action painting, Bismuth poetically reconciles fixed images and movement.
Following the Right Hand of - Marlene Dietrich in “Blue Angel”
2005
Unique
From the beginning of the movie “L'ange bleu” to the moment the image was taken, Pierre Bismuth (born in 1963 in Neuilly-sur-Seine, lives and works in Brussels) has carefully followed and retranscribed the right hand movements of Marlene Dietrich, thereby creating a drawing overlaying the original image. Apparently random, this tangle of lines is in fact extremely meaningful and personal, since it captures the gesture of an iconic actress, whose myth the artist approaches subtlty. Bringing together several artistic approaches of the 20th century, from early photographic experiences of decomposing movement to Pablo Picasso's drawings with a flashlight in space and in the dark, from automatic writing to action painting, Bismuth poetically reconciles fixed images and movement.
From Humanity to Art, From Art to Humanity
2001
Unique
Harald Szeman chose to present "From Humanity to Art" at the entrance of the Italian Pavillon at the 49th Venice Biennale, “Plateau of Mankind”. Communication is a sort of misunderstanding: two persons would not give exactly the same signification to the same word. This produce a slight shift in sense so that it is possible to go from a word to its opposite or to another word trough a series of synonymes.
Most Wanted Men
2006
color spray on wall
Unique
Street graffiti meets sixties conceptualism in Bismuth's Most Wanted Men. The title, a reference to Andy Warhol's famous photographic series of wanted criminals, refers here to the hottest artists in the contemporary scene, their names spray-painted by Bismuth in different colors. Combining media culture's fascination for celebrities, graffiti art, and a reflection on the function of the signature, Most Wanted Men exemplifies one of Bismuth's basic creative strategies: to make a work out of the structuring conventions of other artworks and mass media products in order to expose different mechanisms of visibility and meaning creation. Most Wanted Men offers an ironic comment on a certain deadlock in conceptual art, which heralded the "death of the author" and the dethronement of romantic genius while greatly magnifying the importance of the signature as a final guarantee of the "dematerialized" object. Bismuth's graffiti makes of these most wanted signatures an autonomous work by cutting the signature off from any external reference (the name is no longer attached to a work) and from its auratic link to the person (it is not the named artist who signs). Furthermore, the formal simplicity of the artist's graffiti technique creates a lively contradiction with the much vaunted names that constitute the work's content — names that become strangely meaningless when viewed in the context of city streets and neighborhoods where hot artists are total unknowns (instead of art escaping the confines of the institution into the hustle and bustle of life, here it is literally the names that break free and mingle with the world). Finally, Most Wanted Men plays on the alienating distance between person and name, and the quasi-autonomous life that names sometimes lead, best expressed by a line from Lou Reed's Songs for Drella, itself a comment on Warhol's fame: "People who want to meet my name are always disappointed in me."
