Exhibitions

On the occasion of the renovation of the musée national Eugène-Delacroix’s garden, the exhibition brings together for the first time, under the paradoxal title "Flowers in winter", the main flower paintings of Delacroix and his finest watercolors from french and foreign museums. This exhibit will be accompanied by works by two contemporary artists, Jean-Michel Othoniel and Johan Creten, illustrating the permanence of floral inspiration, in the nineteenth century as the twenty-first century, in the works of creators fully enrolled in their time.

The exhibition celebrates a subject that has haunted the creators of modernity, from Courbet to Monet and Cézanne. It offers a parallel dialogue with the works of Othoniel and Creten. These contemporary artists who place flowers at the heart of their inspiration responded to this invitation mostly by creating new pieces. Glass, bronze, porcelain and paper, they are not literal translations of Delacroix' works, but illustrate how nature is an eternal source of inspiration to artists.

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Image 1-4
Le Nœud de Delacroix, 2012
Mirrored Grey Glass, Stainless Steel
70 7/8 x 80 3/4 x 51 1/8 in.
Private collection

Image 5
Ranunculaceae Knot, 2012
Mirrored Red and Black Glass, Stainless Steel
27 1/2 x 15 3/4 x 27 1/2 in.
Private collection

Image 6
Renonculacée, 2012
Watercolor on paper
14 x 17 7/8 x 1 1/8 in. framed
Courtesy Galerie Perrotin

Image 7
Convolvulus, 2012
Watercolor on paper
14 x 17 7/8 x 1 1/8 in. framed
Courtesy Galerie Perrotin

Image 8 - 9
Herbier merveilleux, 2008
Watercolors printed on paper / lead frame
16 x 12 x 0 1/4 in. each, framed

From June the 23rd to the 4th of November 2012, the Museum Frieder Burda shows Jean-Michel Othoniel latest pieces. His great necklaces and abstract sculptures in Murano glass play with the environment and impose their poetic presence, mixing glass’s fragility and the dynamic of the curves. Each piece works as a dreamcatcher and invite people to marvel.

For the knots serie Othoniels shows at the Museum Frieder Burda, the artist found his inspiration in the borromean knot and in Lacan’s psychoanalytic theories according to which everybody’s inside balance relies on the interdependant connection between the Real, the Symbolic and the Imaginary.

The subject is hence called to mind by its absence and Othoniel reveal it with this never ending structure.

The In Noir is also showed in the exhibition. Othoniel created this artwork in 2010 for the opening of the Centre Pompidou Metz. This thin spider web imposes its height and changes, as in a tale, the relation between the visitor and the artwork. Dominating the people, the piece evokes the oniric worlds we meet in our dreams and invites us to get lost in this disturbing landscape. The artist plays here with one of his favorite theme : the relation between attraction and repulsion, beauty and traps.

This exhibition shows, for the first time, Jean-Michel Othoniel’s work in a german museum.

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Image 1/3, left
Nœud ambre dégradé miroir, 2012
Mirrored glass, stainless steel
51 1/8 x 59 x 29 1/2 in.
Courtesy Galerie Karsten Greve

Image 1/3, center
The Knot of the Real, 2012
Black and grey mirrored glass, stainless steel
78 3/4 x 82 5/8 x 57 1/8 in.
Private collection

Image 1/3
Nœud vert et ambre, 2012
Green and amber mirrored glass, stainless steel
60 1/4 x 66 1/8 x 39 3/8 in.
Courtesy Galerie Perrotin

Image 1/3, background
L'In Noir, 2010
Mirrored glass, metal
116 7/8 x 342 1/2 x 4 3/4 in. framed

Image 2/3, foreground
The Knot of the Real, 2012
Black and grey mirrored glass, stainless steel
78 3/4 x 82 5/8 x 57 1/8 in.
Private collection

Image 1/3, background
L'In Noir, 2010
Mirrored glass, metal
116 7/8 x 342 1/2 x 4 3/4 in. framed

Image 2/3, devant
The Knot of the Real, 2012
Black and grey mirrored glass, stainless steel
78 3/4 x 82 5/8 x 57 1/8 in.
Private collection

Image 2/3, derrière
L'In Noir, 2010
Mirrored glass, metal
116 7/8 x 342 1/2 x 4 3/4 in. framed

Image 3/3, gauche
Le Double Collier gris miroir, 2011
Grey mirrored glass, stainless steel.
126 x 21 5/8 x 21 5/8 in.
Private collection

Image 3/3, centre
Watercolors serie for The Nœud de Lacan, 2012
Watercolors on paper, framed.
24 x 18 1/8 in. / 18 1/8 x 24 in.
Courtesy Galerie Karsten Greve

This exhibition features nine new glass and steel sculptures by Jean-Michel Othoniel. Othoniel’s dynamic installation of poetic and minimal structures transforms the neo-classical galleries of L&M Arts into a mysterious and whimsical environment, and unveils the marvelous that is latent in everyday experiences. For example, The Gigantic Necklace, a site-specific piece consisting of gradated black and silver glass beads, is suspended from the gallery’s fifth floor skylight in an uninterrupted chain, descending through the center of the spiral staircase to the first floor.

Reflecting on the work of Constantin Brancusi, four Knots (Nœuds), monumental coiled strings of glass beads, capture the abstract essence of movement. Another sculpture consisting of a labyrinth of mirrored surfaces, Black Tornado, explores the tempest as an abstract concept: movement around a central void. While Othoniel’s work is also inspired by historical references as diverse as Italian Baroque and American Minimal art, his conception of the knot itself has roots in the psychoanalytic symbol used by Jacques Lacan to explicate the structure of the human psyche. 

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Image 1/5, foreground
Black and purple Knot, 2012
Mirrored glass, stainless steel
43 1/4 x 51 1/8 x 39 3/8 in.
Private collection

Image 1/5, background, left
Blu Knot, 2012
Mirrored glass, stainless steel
51 1/8 x 59 x 39 3/8 in.
Private collection

Image 1/5, background, right
Black Knot, 2012
Mirrored glass, stainless steel
61 3/4 x 57 7/8 x 29 1/2 in.
Private collection

Image 2/5, foreground
Black Knot, 2012
Mirrored glass, stainless steel
61 3/4 x 57 7/8 x 29 1/2 in.
Private collection

Image 2/5, background
The Gigantic Necklace, 2012
Mirrored glass, stainless steel
629 7/8 x 35 3/8 x 7 1/8 in.
Courtesy Galerie Perrotin

Image 3/5, left
Black Tornado, 2012
Mirrored glass, stainless steel
126 x 94 1/2 x 82 5/8 in.
Private collection

Image 3/5, center
Precious Stonewall, 2012
Indian mirrored glass, wood.
29 1/8 x 21 5/8 x 8 5/8 in.
Private Collection

Image 3/5, right
Precious Stonewall, 2012
Indian mirrored glass, wood.
51 1/8 x 39 3/8 x 8 5/8 in.
Private Collection

Image 4/5
Black Tornado, 2012
Mirrored glass, stainless steel
126 x 94 1/2 x 82 5/8 in.
Private collection

Image 5/5
The Garland Necklace, 2012
Mirrored glass, stainless steel
115 x 58 1/4 x 98 3/8 in.
Private collection

The important Jean-Michel Othoniel retrospective, organized in 2011 at the Centre Pompidou, subsequently traveled the world over.

The Macau Museum of Art was one of the last venues for this exhibition, which traced the artist's path from his early works in sulfur to his glass sculptures, which draw poetic arabesques in space, mingling the extravagant qualities of baroque with minimalist abstraction. 

For his second solo exhibition at the Karsten Greve Galery, Cologne, Othoniel shows seven sculptures in glass beads about the theme of Lacan node. From his large necklaces made of colored glass beads to his lassos series, introducing the concept of movement (the impulse of the lasso is given by the body), Othoniel explores, since the 2000s, the concepts of dynamism, rotation, spatial writing and movement.

In 2008, the Karsten Greve Galery Cologne, shows Othoniel’s Grand Ricochet bleu, a sculpture inscribed in the architectural space but maintaining nevertheless its formal autonomy. Othoniel likes to be on two grounds " to reveal space and at the same time to create autonomous sculpture that exists for itself." In 2009, the Lacets bleus explore deeper the question of the "absent body". "It is about creating volumes of absence, constructions of variable dimensions where bodies could curl in." Othniel became interested more and more in the topology, particularly in the Möbius strip. This figure naturally lead him to learn more about Jacques Lacan, who made the topology and particularly created the "nodes" theory, which,a ccording to the psychoanalist, is the privileged access to the representation of the three dimensions of the analytic theory (the imaginary, the symbolic and the real). One recurrent theme in Lacan’s theory, is the one showing love as an element being a compensation of a lack of sex ("intercourse" is to be distinguished from "relationship"). The psychoanalyst will return many times over the Borromean knot’s image, this mathematical figure (which he becomes aware through the work of Georges Th. Guilbaud) which is defined as three "rings of string" knotted so that if one of the three freed itself from the others, they all unravel. This knot allows Lacan to figure out love’s sublimation process, holding together the three registers of the symbolic (the lover's discourse), the imaginary (the eroticism of the body) and the real (the sexual act).

Othoniel then draws his inspiration from this nodal theory. Le Nœud de Lacan he created in 2009 is of course a tribute to the psychoanalyst, with whom he shares the same passion for words and puns. The knot ties several physical and semantic realities: science (theory of braids and traceries), popular world (marine nodes, brain teasers, illusionists practices), domestic world (the tied tissue which enable us to remember), common psychology (having the throat or stomach "tied"), eroticism (the art of Shibari and bondage) or trivial (in the french familiar language, the node is a synonym for penis ("dick head").

The important retrospective on Jean-Michel Othoniel, organized in 2011 at the Centre Pompidou, traveled the world over.

The Brooklyn Museum of Art was the last venue for this exhibition, which traced the artist's path from his early works in sulfur to glass sculptures, which draw poetic arabesques in space, mingling the extravagance of baroque with minimalist abstraction. 

« My Way » presents Othoniel’s early works from the 1980s, rendered in sulfur, phosphorus, and wax, that touch upon sexual identity and suffering, and his more recent large-scale works made with colorful Murano glass from Italy, a medium that combines strength and fragility. His organic and geometrical glass sculptures conjure historical and popular references while also evoking the fantasy universe of the fairytale. Included will be the Museum’s own Othoniel, The Secret Happy End (2008), as well as four pieces loaned by New York City collectors. The title of the exhibition is taken from the song made famous by Frank Sinatra, "My Way", which is symbolic of a unique vision unaffected by popular trends. Works on view include Self-Portrait in Priest’s Robe (1986), an early meditation on mourning and desire made after the death of a former lover; The Soul Molded in the Bottom (1989), rendered in sulfur, a substance Othoniel considers beautiful yet vulgar and is drawn to for its metamorphic qualities; Black is Beautiful (2003), a monumental work comprised of a double-stranded necklace of black-colored Murano glass beads, the title of which references the cultural movement launched by African Americans in the 1960s; Lacan’s Knot (2009), a piece made with futuristic mirrored glass and steel that evokes the three Borromean rings that provided Jacque Lacan inspiration for his theory of human subjectivity; and Drawings Series (Aquarelle) (1996-2000), a group of detailed watercolor sketches for large-scale projects and commissions realized later, including The Kiosk of the Nightwalkers (2000), a Metro entrance that has become one of the most beloved landmarks of Paris.

In the early 1990s, while visiting the Aeolian Islands, Othoniel became interested in obsidian, a naturally occurring volcanic glass that he was able to create artificially for works like Spoonerism (1992). Fascinated by its malleability and transitional properties, he made glass the predominant element in his work and began collaborating with glassmakers in Murano, Italy, and elsewhere around the world. The exhibition features his larger-scale glass works including My Bed (2002); glass bead heraldic banners; glass forms that hang like strange fruit or creatures; necklaces magnified to architectural scale; and the artist’s most recent glass sculptures, which are suspended or rise from the ground and feature rows of beads that trace curves and knots suggesting mathematical equations or molecular structures. Also in the Brooklyn Museum presentation is The Precious Stonewall, a major work produced in India (New Delhi, Firozabad) at the invitation of the French Embassy in collaboration with Institut Français (Paris) and the Alliance Française de Delhi and with the support of the Centre Pompidou. This work is a tribute to the piles of bricks that line Indian roads adorned with hundreds of necklaces, each of whose stones have been hand cut like a jewel. Made of hundreds of amber glass bricks, this monumental work is also the artist’s poetic homage to the iconic Stonewall Inn in New York City where the gay rights movement was born.