Exhibitions

From June 16 to August 7, 2022, Jean-Michel Othoniel will present, for the first time in Korea, a series of new works.

The Seoul Museum of Art is surrounded by gardens, including one belonging to the imperial palace, and is the artist’s honor and privilege to show a series of sculptures in this garden, placed on the water.

The exhibition Treasure Gardens welcome the visitor as if in an enchanted fairy-tale. The metaphor of the garden is at the heart of the artist’s work. The artist has always linked the sensory garden to his spiritual garden. 

The garden of a thousand species at the Deoksugung Palace, also known as the "Palace of virtue and longevity", offers him the perfect setting for his poetic reveries.

The exhibition continues in the museum galleries, in the realm of majesty and contemplation.

The artist reveals his passion for roses, particularly apparent in the paintings he created for the Musée du Louvre in Paris, but also in a new series created especially for Seoul inspired by the plum blossom, a symbol of resistance and fertility. Like the flowers themselves, these canvases herald the end of winter and the joy of rebirth, the end of a difficult period and the hope for a better world.

The artist is passionate about the signs nature offers us – the sound of wind in the leaves, of birds in flight, of the marvels that surrounds us and that we must learn to know again; Othoniel has long been working to re-enchant the world.

From 15 May to 6 November 2022

To celebrate the 110th anniversary of its construction, Postman Cheval’s Ideal Palace is pleased to host the exhibition The dream of water, imagined by the artist Jean-Michel Othoniel. Created especially for this unique place, the exhibition will be held, for the first time, within the Palace itself and in the garden.

Inspired by the preparatory drawings of Postman Cheval, Jean-Michel Othoniel’s intervention appeals to the senses and summons the marvellous to bring Postman Cheval’s dream to life: for the Palace to be animated by water features, fountains and waterfalls.

Invited by the Director of the Ideal Palace, Frédéric Legros, Jean-Michel Othoniel has taken up the challenge of bringing his work subtly into the unique creations of Postman Cheval. Two singular artistic universes meet between sculpture, construction and architectural follies.