ANTOINE BERNHART | POSTERS
ERO GURO - PSYCHOBILLY

Antoine Bernhart has used a poster format, which highlights the application and all the details of his work, for his collaboration with Venomen.

Strasbourg artist Antoine BERNHART has made a name for himself with his extreme representations in his drawn and painted artworks. Member of the neo-surrealist movement Phases since 1968, he is to move away from it land evolve in the punk spheres later on, by doing numerous illustrations for trash and psychobilly bands such as the Cramps, the Meteors, the Tall Boys....

In the 1990's he became fascinated with Japanese erotic culture, and his work became more radical in a trashy and subversive mix of cruel and offbeat sketches. His work was exhibited at the Tomi Ungerer Museum (Strasbourg 2016-2017), the Erotic Museum (Paris 2009), Bon Goût Gallery (Berlin 2008), and the Mamco (Geneva 2008 and 2015).

"Night is the world of Antoine Bernhart's artworks, the night of prison cells, the night of deep forests, the night that is auspicious for monsters, disappearing at dawn. It is in this dark setting that the artist sets the scenes of rape and violence, which he has endlessly been drawing for decades. An immense garden of torment, where childish figures with sneering masks torture victims who may seem to be at the height of ecstasy, such as the Chinese supplicant described by Georges Bataille in "Les larmes d'Éros". For it is indeed a dramaturgy of evil and an experience of the limits, where erotic excess comes close to death. The work of Antoine Bernhart is thus part of a long lineage that links Sade to Bellmer. The hallucinatory power of his figures, the fascinating cruelty of his sexual theater make this artist a radical exception in the field of contemporary drawing." Christian Bernard