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. From May 14th to November 6th, 2022.
Based on a creation by the L.A. Dance Project, Benjamin Millepied - Founding Director, with the exceptional participation of Lil Buck. A new performance inspired by the choreographies of Raoul-Auger Feuillet and the fountain-sculptures created by Jean-Michel Othoniel for the new grove, Les Belles Danses, inaugurated on May 10 and 11, 2015.
From drawing to sculpture, from installation to performance, Jean-Michel Othoniel has a universe with multiple contours. It is the result of an ambitious work of which this documentary proposes an exceptional follow-up, allowing to discover the creative process of an artist resolutely in phase with his time: the drawing sessions in the intimacy of the studio, the conception with a team, the realization and final installation in the lagoon that borders the National Museum of Qatar created by Jean Nouvel in Doha.
52 '- 2019 - Authors: Olivier Widmaier Picasso/Philippe Lanfranchi - Directors: Philippe Lanfranchi/Stéphane Rossi - Production: Outsidefilms & Welcome - With the participation of France Télévisions and the CNC and Animated Image
To create these paintings, the artist was inspired by the rose painted by Rubens in The Marriage of Marie de Medici and Henry IV (1621-1625).
"I was passionate about this commissioned project for the 30th anniversary of the Pyramid. For the past two years, I have loved roaming the halls of the Louvre in search of a flower that could become the symbol of the greatest museum in the world. The exhibition of my paintings in the Cour Puget moved me greatly. The fact that the Louvre wishes to keep this installation in this place upsets me. To join Georges Braque, CY Twombly, Anselm Kiefer and to rub shoulders with them with the masterpieces of humanity is an honor that transcends all my dreams as an artist.
Jean-Michel Othoniel, artist
The CRAC exhibition welcomes the visitors with a colossal wave, six metres high and fifteen meters long, composed of more than ten thousand bricks of black glass. Specially designed for the venue, this work echoes with the first photograph taken in Sète in 1857 by Gustave Le Gray, entitled La Grande Vague. The Big Wave is built as a metal frame covered with glass.
In the rooms following The Big Wave, the visitors will discover mysterious meteorites in obsidian – the black rock which results from the lava of volcanoes – as well as a series of previously unseen works, made on canvas and entitled Black Lotus, surrounding eponymous sculptures. The final rooms of the exhibition display the violence of the elements, represented by a series of gigantic steel tornadoes hanging in space, and a large knot of coloured glass beads, The Wild Pansy, a tribute to the freedom of being different.
" Like an enclosed garden, a dream world, a personal Map of Tendre, the installation at the Carré Sainte Anne in Montpellier modestly showcases the works as precious sacred talismans. I have kept all these key pieces in a collection of my own works in order to be able to go back to it and
restore my energy ". Jean-Michel Othoniel
The new works are almost all monumental, The Big Wave is built as a metal frame covered
with glass. It is the result of two years of work and several months of technical drawings.
The beauty of the place really pushed me to build this radical, monochrome and abstract
madness. It is composed of several thousand bricks that were all blown in India following my
residency with Indian glassmakers. This scale 1 wave engulfs us.
The CRAC in Sète presents an exhibition composed of a new series of monumental works. Inspired by the forms of nature, it presents a journey close to a radical, monochrome and abstract architecture. These new works of glass, mirror, metal, ink or obsidian show how the artist’s work has evolved since his retrospective at the Centre Pompidou in 2011.
The Carré Sainte-Anne of Montpellier presents some fifty works by Jean-Michel Othoniel, part of his personal collection. For Othoniel, to collect his own works tallies with a desire to remove himself from the world; foregoing his reticence and showing this collection of his works to the public is part of the ambivalence of feelings that the artist places at the heart of his work.
From June 10 to Sept 24 2017, two simultaneous monographic exhibitions dedicated to Jean-Michel Othoniel will be presented at the CRAC in Sète and the Carré Sainte-Anne of Montpellier.
Under the title “Géométries Amoureuses” (Geometries in Love), this double event shows several facets of the artist’s work through some sixty sculptures, a dozen paintings and over a hundred works on paper. The title brings together the dualities that characterize the work of Othoniel: sensuality and rigor, the hidden and revealed, wounds and beauties.
