Pascal Bernier
(Brussels,
1960 )
After the Industrial Revolution and with the advance of Enlightenment thinking, the genre of vanitas still life lost popularity in painting. Only after World War I did it experience a revival in Cubism. The oeuvre of Brussels-based artist Pascal Bernier links up with this tradition and translates the genre into its own time. His installations, videos, sculptures and photographs refer to the theme of memento mori, depicting or expressing the constant nearness of death. In poetic, critical and humorous ways, Bernier stages a tattered and marred nature. For example, he regularly stages stuffed animals with bandaged injuries. Bernier shows the other side of industrialization by confronting the viewer with a nature that has had to make way for mass production and the pursuit of profit.
