Bert Theis

Bert Theis was born in 1952 in Luxembourg, where he died in 2016. He lived and worked in Milan.

Bert Theis made his international name at the 1995 Venice Biennale. There he represented Luxembourg by linking the Belgian and Dutch pavilions with a simulacrum of a Luxembourg pavilion made of a palisade of wooden planks painted white and forming a backyard with only a few white long chairs. The entrance was through a corridor where a kind of rap song was played, in which Marcel Duchamp's ironic voice could be heard. The chaise-longue is one of the recurring objects in his installations. It embodies the idea of rest, pause, laziness, in a word, withdrawal and suspension from the alienating flow of daily life.

In 1997, as part of the Skulptur Projekte Münster, Bert Theis presented a sculpture also made of white painted wooden boards. It is a large rectangular platform that can be climbed onto via steps or side slopes. Its visual vocabulary is reminiscent of minimal art, but its structure, which invites use, symbolically moves it out of the realm of art objects as objects of free contemplation. This work is entitled Philosophical Platform. The term platform is programmatic here: it is a question of proposing an open space, available, useful but which does not prescribe any particular use. In other words, an invitation to invent individual or collective uses. The reference to philosophy should be understood as a reminder or commemoration of the ancient practice of philosophy as a questioning dialogue between minds concerned with agreement between equals.

The Philosophy Platform was appropriated in all sorts of ways, from critical discussion to tango lessons, from loving conversation to a quiet stop during the visit to the big exhibition. Since we are unable to re-enact it in Toulouse on the occasion of the twentieth anniversary of its creation, as we had hoped, we are presenting benches designed by Bert Theis in the Raymond VI garden, as a tribute to this exemplary artist in the search for anti-authoritarian and convivial forms to open up the paths of a reasoned exodus from the field of art towards an emancipated city.

Bert Theis' works have been presented at various international biennials, including the Venice Biennale (1995), Manifesta 2, the Gwangju Biennale (2002), Skulptur Projekte Münster (1997) and the Taipei Biennale (2008).