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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 Treasure Gardens 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, the Palais idéal du facteur Cheval is pleased to host the exhibition Le rêve de l'eau, designed by the artist Jean-Michel Othoniel.

Created especially for this unique place in the world, the exhibition unfolds for the first time in the heart of the work of the facteur Cheval and his garden.

Inspired by the preparatory drawings of Factor Cheval, Jean-Michel Othoniel's intervention appeals to the senses and summons the marvellous to bring Factor Cheval's dream to life: that the Palace be animated by water games, fountains and waterfalls. In a perfect dialogue, Jean Michel Othoniel creates works all around and inside the Palace, inspired by the forms conceived by the facteur Cheval.

Invited by the Director of the Palais idéal, Frédéric Legros, Jean-Michel Othoniel subtly takes up the challenge of bringing contemporary creation into the singular work of the facteur Cheval for the first time. Between sculpture, construction and folly, two worlds of singular artists come together.

Jean-Michel Othoniel investit la totalité du Petit Palais et son jardin. Il s’agit de la plus grande exposition personnelle de l’artiste à Paris depuis sa rétrospective "My Way" au Centre Pompidou en 2011.

Pour l’occasion, en plus de 70 œuvres nouvelles, Othoniel invente Le Théorème de Narcisse : un homme-fleur, qui en se reflétant lui-même, reflète le monde autour de lui. Selon Gaston Bachelard, « le narcissisme n’est pas toujours névrosant, il joue aussi un rôle positif dans l’oeuvre esthétique. La sublimation n’est pas toujours la négation d’un désir. Elle peut être une sublimation pour un idéal. »

L’artiste tisse une toile d’irréalité, d’enchantement, d’illusion, de libération de l’imagination. Rivières de briques bleues, Lotus et Colliers d’or, Couronne de la Nuit, Noeuds Sauvages et Precious Stonewalls miroitants, ces œuvres sont enchâssées dans le bâtiment, suspendues aux arbres ou posées sur l’eau ; elles dialoguent avec l’architecture du Petit Palais et les ors de son jardin. L’exposition est placée sous le signe du ré-enchantement et de la théorie des reflets que l’artiste développe depuis près de dix ans avec la complicité du mathématicien mexicain Aubin Arroyo. Cette invitation au rêve nous permet, le temps de l’exposition, de résister à la désillusion du monde. Cette exposition est un message d’ouverture offert gratuitement au public.