Bertrand Lavier in conversation with Catherine Millet

At the heart of the presentation is a new series of paintings that belong to one of Lavier’s most iconic bodies of work: Walt Disney Productions. The starting point for the project, which began in 1984, is to be found in a Walt Disney comic strip from 1977, in which Mickey and Minnie Mouse visit a modern art gallery. Here, they encounter an array of paintings and sculptures that ingeniously mimic genuine modern and contemporary art (the biomorphic sculptures in the story resemble the work of Jean Arp, for example). Fascinated by this, Lavier started to make life-size replicas of the Disney artworks. Hence his colourful, abstract canvases are directly inspired by the paintings that sprang from the cartoonist’s imagination but which, in their own humorous way, were undoubtedly based upon real works of art. By appropriating the fictitious paintings from the inaccessible, printed page and presenting them as autonomous objects within a real gallery space, Lavier recreates an equivalent viewing experience to that of Mickey and Minnie. This loop calls into question the link between fact and fiction – notably the point as which the simulacrum becomes reality – and the representation of modern art in society. Interestingly, the striking simplicity of Lavier’s compositions and the thick, painterly surfaces belie their technical complexity: each canvas incorporates a number of different materials and techniques, ranging from photography to laser-jet and silk-screen printing.