After Versailles, the Centre Pompidou and the Louvre, the artist Jean-Michel Othoniel invests the Petit Palais for his largest solo exhibition since 2011. For this sponsored exhibition as part of the Dior Cultural Gardens, the artist created his "Narcissus Theorem". He re-enchants the place through more than seventy works ranging from the museum to the garden. A journey to discover until January 2, 2022.
Portrait of Jean-Michel Othoniel
Born in 1964, Jean-Michel Othoniel is a French sculptor. Today, he lives and works in Paris. A graduate of the École nationale supérieure d'arts de Cergy-Pontoise, he began to make himself known at documenta 13 in Kassel, in 1992, thanks to his sculptures in sulfur. A year later, following a trip and a meeting with a vulcanologist, he became interested in the properties of glass and its ability to move from one state to another.
The notions of metamorphoses, sublimations and transmutations are thus at the heart of his approach. If you don't know Jean-Michel Othoniel, you may have seen his work without realizing it. Indeed, in 2000, invited as part of his first public commission, Jean-Michel Othoniel transformed the Paris metro station of the Palais-Royal du Louvre. The Kiosque des Noctambules with its two glass and aluminum crowns then became an emblematic work in the capital.
In 2011, the Centre Pompidou decided to dedicate its first retrospective to him, which traces his career since the beginning in 1987. Entitled "My Way", the exhibition presents eighty new and monumental works that appeal to the imagination. In 2015, the artist invested Versailles with Les Belles danses, a set of three fountain sculptures installed on the basins. His site-specific works dialogue either with historical places or with today's architecture, always with the aim of poetizing and re-enchanting the world.
The genesis of Narcissus' Theorem
In this exhibition, Jean-Michel Othoniel evokes the theory of reflection, which he has been developing for more than ten years with the Mexican mathematician Aubin Arroyo. But, this time, the artist approaches it through a new approach: The Theory of Narcissus. In Greek mythology, Narcissus is a hunter from Boeotia. Son of the nymph Liriope and the river god Cephise, he is endowed with great beauty. According to Ovid's Metamorphoses , when he came to drink, he saw, for the first time, his own reflection in the water and fell madly in love with it. Completely hypnotized, he will remain several days to contemplate himself and will end, in the face of this unsatisfied passion, by withering away, despite the warnings of the nymph Echo. Therefore, the myth of Narcissus often returns a form of neurosis.
However, as Gaston Bachelard points out, "narcissism is not always neurotic, it also plays a positive role in aesthetic work. Sublimation is not always the negation of a desire. It can be a sublimation for an ideal." (Gaston Bachelard, "L'eau et les rêves. Essai sur l'imagination de la matière", 1942, p.64)
It is in this perspective that we must perceive the exhibition The Theorem of Narcissus by Jean-Michel Othoniel which indicates that "Here I see narcissism as positive, explains the artist, in the sense that it serves to build oneself and to reflect the world around oneself. […] People who show up say a lot about today's world." In the age of the selfie, the artist invites us through these glass spheres, to observe our own reflection differently, but also to contemplate the reflection of the world. This mise en abyme of self-image questions us about the relationship we have with the world around us.
A reflection of a changing world
Narcissus' Theorem then initiates a transition from one world to another. The works highlight, through reflection, a changing world. Thus, The Blue River, (2021) in its aquamarine colors, similar to precious stones, Jean-Michel Othoniel switches the architecture of the museum to that of a fairytale castle. The opalescent installation in situ is then a passage leading the visitor to an initiatory journey.
After the waterfall of the entrance, the visitor heads into the gardens, tinged with exoticism, which already amazed visitors of the twentieth century. And it is at the heart of the latter that Narcissus' Theorem draws its essence, with the works that echo the artist's famous pearl necklaces. Each silver or gold-colored metal bead returns the visitor to its own image. Suspended in trees or placed on water, lotuses covered with gold leaf seem to float and reflect in trees and ponds.
In dialogue with the garden, each work has the particularity of evolving and changing over time. Thus, the glass harmonizes or contrasts according to the time, the weather, the brightness – from dawn, through dusk to night – or according to the seasons. Each of these changes brings a new dimension to the work, in a perpetual enchantment. In this sense, beyond his own reflection, the visitor contemplates the reflection of this world that changes tirelessly.
A dialogue between the museum and the artist's works
Every year, in the fall, the Petit Palais invites a contemporary artist to exhibit his work in the heart of the museum. Thus, this invitation creates a dialogue between the permanent works of the museum and those of the artist. For this season, Jean-Michel Othoniel is in charge of imagining an exhibition to build contrast and harmony in the gardens and Art Nouveau architecture of the building. Through seventy works, including a part designed especially for the event, the artist wishes to go further in the dialogue between architecture and heritage, a dialogue he has been experimenting with since his beginnings. Indeed, according to him, "the masterpiece of the Petit Palais is the building itself".
Designed by architect Charles Girault during the Universal Exhibition of 1900, the Petit Palais monument was designed to make you dream. From the entrance, the tone is set. Giving the impression of a runoff, a waterfall of more than a thousand blue bricks hugs the steps of the external staircase. The dialogue also unfolds inside the museum itself. Opening up new perspectives, the windows punctuate the route and establish continuity between the outside and the inside. Thus, the Silver Knots presented under the exterior gallery, is part of the same perspective as the painting entitled The Sleep of Gustave Courbet: two works that almost merge by a game of superimposition.
Halfway through the exhibition, the artist installs a sublime and imposing Murano glass chandelier in the heart of a circular room, in perfect harmony. Overlooking the staircase to descend to the basement where the rest of the route is located, Couronne de la Nuit invites us to circulate around it in order to marvel at it from all angles. It then begins a transition from top to bottom, from an external light to a more intimate penumbra.
An exhibition to re-enchant the world
"I wanted to recreate a Garden of Eden, out of the world."
The visit continues on the ground floor of the Petit Palais, in a space plunged into semi-darkness. Through the installation Agora , a work inspired by his trip to India, Jean-Michel Othoniel accentuates the dreaminess of the exhibition. For these Wild Knots that fly over the ground, the artist uses an extremely rich but soft color palette, colors made of gradients and shades. Light and color thus create a soothing and meditative atmosphere.
Throughout the journey, he offers us an enchanted, poetic, almost unreal and illusory parenthesis. Appealing to our senses and imagination, this exhibition is accessible to all of us, since it is free. Jean-Michel Othoniel declares that: "I wanted to create a place of unreality, enchantment, illusion, liberation of the imagination, a place on the border of dreams that allows us the time of the visit to resist the disillusionment of the world. Thus, this invitation to dream offers us in this ephemeral moment, a possibility to resist the disillusionment of the world.
An exhibition to re-enchant the world and our daily lives, to discover and rediscover over the seasons until January 2, 2022.
Also find a selection of exhibitions from September 2021 on Justfocus.
