NEW WORKS
December 2020 - January 2021, Kukje Gallery K1, Seoul, South Korea.
Discover the exhibitionNEW WORKS is a solo exhibition of Jean-Michel Othoniel on view at Kukje Gallery Seoul, from December 17, 2020, through January 31, 2021. Following Othoniel’s first solo show at Kukje in 2016, this exhibition will be the second exhibition in four years held and the first at Kukje’s newly renovated K1 building. NEW WORKS covers the two exhibition spaces on the first ground of the building, presenting 37 new works that include glass sculptures, lithographs of watercolor drawings, and paintings which marked a new milestone in his artistic career. These new works, in particular, were created in lockdown caused by the global pandemic Covid-19. They not only symbolize a ‘new’ creation and cultures arrived upon our civilization from worldwide distress, but also contain the artist’s dearest hopes for people to contemplate beauty that is immutable even during chaos.
Jean-Michel Othoniel has taken inspirations from the spiritual practices and religious traditions from different cultures and times as well as from his personal experiences. Employing ‘transformable’ materials, such as glass, sulfur and wax, the artist continuously explores the artistic experiments centered around the act of intervening when the materials evolve and change in form by the external forces such as fire. Additionally, Othoniel has expanded the boundaries of his practice in context and formality by collaborating with craftsmen from Venice, Japan, India and Mexico.
Facing the scenery of Sam-Cheng Dong Street, the first of two gallery spaces with cornered window in K1 building showcases a new series of Precious Stonewall. Created in respect of the traditional glass-making of Indian artisans, the work borrows its title from Stonewall Riot (1969), a demonstration of gay community against the violence of police and discrimination in New York. This series is a result of his latest research on materiality of glass and opens up the possibility for him to reach the architectural scale. On a journey to Firozabad, India in 2010, the artist was deeply impressed by Indian craftsmen working with glass in sweltering heat, which prompted the artist to learn the traditional techniques of glass-making and created a new module, the glass brick, with their help. The artist was also struck by the local custom of piling bricks prior to building a house he constantly witnessed during his trip. Contemplating on the meaning of brick, the artist developed it into a formal language in his practice. As for him, brick is the most rudimentary and universal element shared by all humanity, and symbolized the primitive yet essential desire for “living.” By transforming brick into the fragile material of glass which represents the moment in verge of breaking, Othoniel brings the attention to an innately paradoxical character of the material. For this exhibition, he is presenting a new series of bi-colored Precious Stonewall. Shown alongside and displayed in the center of the space is Stairs to Paradise constructed with blue glass bricks in a form of stairs. The work resonates natural human desire to reach heaven or paradise, and reflects on how the sculptures made of glass bricks have led the artist to go beyond the established concept of sculpture and developed into architectural device that forms a new relationship with “space.”
The passage that connects the first and second exhibition spaces showcases a series of lithographs of original watercolor drawings that correspond to the sculptures Precious Stonewall’. Recalling the ‘glass paintings’ produced by the 20th century German artist Josef Albers during his years as a teacher at the Bauhaus, the lithographs illustrate Othoniel’s examination on the color, one of the basic elements of art. A simple collaboration of two colors—clear and dark blue, yellow and emerald green, blue and grey, and so on—serves as an opportunity for the viewer to experience Othoniel’s unique world of abstraction beyond a mere representation of sculptural works.
Featured in the second gallery space is a series of sculptures and paintings depicting roses. The rose is a flower which has played a key role in Othoniel’s artistic practice and symbolizes his great admiration to nature, constantly appearing in Othoniel’s works. As a testament to how flower is served as an important theme in Othoniel’s works, the exhibition will feature six pieces of La rose du Louvre paintings, four new rose paintings and four rose sculptures. La rose du Louvre paintings are exceptionally meaningful to the artist as they’ve found a permanent home in the Louvre Museum after produced as commissioned works for the 30th anniversary (2019) of construction of the Louvre’s pyramid. Prior to this, Othoniel visited the museum for 2 years passing through over 5,000 collections of the Louvre and studied their historical and cultural implications, until he discovered a rose in Ruben’s Wedding of Marie de’ Medici to Henri IV, which he then transformed it into abstract form with black ink and painted on canvas gilded with gold leaf. Also shown are rose sculptures that further epitomize Othoniel’s interest in flowers. Rose, sharing the similar formality with the artist’s previous glass mirrored sculptures, is coated in pink, and highlights the vitality embedded in roses. Black Rose, meanwhile, is coated with the black mat powder, thereby creating a powerful tension between two different colors.
The exhibition will provide an opportunity to explore how the ‘transformation’ and ‘metamorphosis,’ as centrepieces in the artist’s practice, have developed and evolved over time as well as dictated his choice of diverse materials. By transforming the everyday, universal unit of brick into the luxurious material of glass, Othoniel maximizes the contrast between the strength and the fragility. Further, Othoniel metamorphoses the original quality of nature contained in rose by coating the sculpture in black which has eradicated “vitality,” the symbol of red rose. His artistic experimentation brings us to contemplate on the existence of beauty, and invites us to the wondrous world that we have forgotten.