Wall of Words 2014
For decades, Roland Bernier has been creating art with words. Each word in the "Wall of Words" has meaning, but is out of context with the words on either side. Through activity and movement in the area, viewers are placed within the context of their transient environment, absorbing them into the artwork. They are slowed for a moment, challenged by the words, searching for a connection, a meaning that only each can translate by interacting with the piece. "The idea of taking a word out of context has opened a new visual world for me. I continue to experiment with words, looking for and creating new relationships between the form of the word and a variety of images. My work has both verbal and visual references, alluding to a nonexistent meaning. I purposely use clichés and combine them with imagery from everyday objects. In this installation the viewer becomes the image."
We are pleased that this installation provides the "Blue Bear" another point of interest to keep the curiosity piqued. - Denver Convention Center Newsletter, 2014
Pictures from the permanent installation of Wall of Words at the Colorado Convention Center, in downtown Denver.
For more information on this monumental installation by Roland Bernier see these related articles: CODA|worx
Denver Art Museum Installation, 2002
Letters of the alphabet -- painted ones, wooden ones, mirrored ones -- made up a total environment for Between the Lines: Word Works by Roland Bernier at the Denver Art Museum. They climbed the walls and were stacked on pedestals covering the floor. Some were arranged into short words, though the meanings of the words were irrelevant, since Bernier's point wasn't to tell stories, but to create something purely aesthetic. And although it's not easy to use words without bringing in their meanings, Bernier did it. This show -- dedicated to the seventy-year-old conceptualist -- was put together by the museum's Nancy Tieken, and it was one of those rare occasions when a Denver artist was given the royal treatment at the DAM
-Michael Paglia, Westword, Best Museum Show, 2002.
Denver artist Roland Bernier’s Wordplay at gallery
For most of us, words are symbols that have evolved over centuries, each alluding to some aspect of the world and holding a distinctive, if not always exactly distinct, meaning.
But veteran Denver artist Roland Bernier throws such thinking upside down. He is not so much interested in what words mean as how they look.
He gives them tangible form, transforming them into three-dimensional objects and then stacking, arranging and recontextualizing them in surprisingly myriad ways.
Kyle McMillan, The Denver Post, July 18, 2007 Click here to read the complete article, courtesy of the Denver Post.
