there are several ways to approach Jean-Michel Othoniel, eternal troubadour of 55 years, artist of the beautiful, claimed that oscillates from yellow sulphur to the wonderful necklaces multi-colored ( Peggy’s Necklace was blue in the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice in 1997). Recognizable at a glance, yet he is never neither quite the same nor quite another. Hair tousled and face of putti, red jacket cherry pageantry at the final gala dinner in Beaubourg or total black look to the city, he camps-in-chief of the orchestra, peaceful in front of his creations.

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the force of Their childhood convinces the brain Catherine Grenier, director of the Giacometti Foundation, which sees it as “a presence is a concern, a fear of the disappearance”. Their fairy tale that suspends the pearls to the trees seduced the icon French-Catherine Deneuve in memory of Jacques Demy and his peau d’âne of the dress, the colour of time ” (1970). Jean-Michel Othoniel, an artist-enchanter, promises, quite simply, the film, written by Olivier Widmaier Picasso and Philippe Lanfranchi. It follows, for 52 minutes, the huge construction site of qatar, conducted in great secrecy, to the future project of platform artistic, the Solfatara in Montreuil, around his studio and that of the belgian sculptor Johan Creten. These two dreamers hyperactive imagine “create a dialogue between all artists work with the landscape, in short, almost a project of land art”.

It refines Alpha , this ballet in the 114 sculptures of black pearls on the 900m of the Lagoon ” he has invented for the National Museum of Qatar (NMQ) and dancing with the water so precious to the desert to the pink sand designed by Jean Nouvel, the extraordinary architecture just opened in Doha. The see correct the height or the curve of those black branches that evoke Arabic calligraphy gives an idea of his intense imagination, as well as its meticulous attention of a watchmaker. In 2018 the MUSEUM of Saint-Etienne, his hometown of minors and soot that it left in 1981 after a degree in arts, he was a black wave at Hokusai, huge mikado glass bricks, which put the visitor the Face of the darkness . The ballerina Marie-Agnès Gillot has been tamed, the current and unfolding like a red flower.

Baroque-flamboyant

The fire and the gold the have already inspired. At the heart of the gardens of the château de Versailles in 2015, in the grove of the Water Theatre, where its fountain glass beads and gold takes the Art of describing the dance , a work commissioned by Louis XIV to his ballet master Raoul Feuillet. All of these experiences converge to Oracles , an exhibition of fifteen sculptures at the Galerie Perrotin. Some come from the composition ranges of the minimalist Donald Judd, adding to the baroque flamboyance of the Court. A blue River , of the glass bricks in blue “Firozi” indian, waves over 8 metres and proves that Othoniel is not limited in anything. As a child takes a blank sheet of paper and made the drawing he wants. His Agora brick stainless steel is a mound and a cave, satiny outside, miroitée in. This step towards the architecture he’s going well, he had been fascinated to see the work in the long course of Jean Nouvel in Qatar.

Jean-Michel Othoniel, Oracles
Galerie Perrotin
10, passage Saint-Claude, Third district of Paris.
Phone: 01 42 16 79 79
Hours: Tuesday to Saturday from 11h to 19h up: June 8,
Catalog: Othoniel: My Way , Centre Pompidou, 2012.