Jean-Michel Othoniel
09 Mar - 26 May 2012
JEAN-MICHEL OTHONIEL
À bruit secret
9 March - 26 May 2012
Galerie Karsten Greve is pleased to announce the upcoming exhibition dedicated to the French artist Jean-Michel Othoniel. Since 1990 Jean-Michel Othoniel’s spectacular glass sculptures have earned him international acclaim. His oversized sculptures – made from murano glass – are being composed to magnificent installations which even have decorated whole house facades or public places.
For his show at Galerie Karsten Greve Jean-Michel Othoniel has created seven new sculptures reflecting the theme Noeud (Knot) accompanied by a set of watercolours. The group of sculptures builds up a surreal environment, leaving a mark of lightness in spite of his weight of many kilos of one single pice. The scenery gets additionally appealing as the beads heavily reflect the illumination. Glass, as a material, has a very ambivalent impact on the viewer: it is not only beautiful and seductive but it is also a very cold, massive and heavy material. Nevertheless, the impression of beauty and magic, predominant to the viewer, is the key for opening the dialogue between artist and viewer, Othoniel refers: “in my opinion, beauty is a trap. First of all you fall in love with it, you are attracted by it, as butterflies are attracted by a flower.” So after entering the world of the artist and his art, the viewer begins to realize the many different meanings and associations linked with his work, beginning with erotic associations over suggestions of precious material ending up with confusion about the disproportionate formats.
In the conversation with Bernard Marcadé for the exhibition catalogue Othoniel explains: “What interests me in these pieces is the question of the hole, of being situated at the centre of the knot... It is the idea of the tornado, the idea of being at the centre of the process and of the sculpture itself, of placing oneself at the eye of the cyclone. My work consists today in placing movement around this centre, in order that it may develop like a sort of tornado or cyclone, that it may become a spiral. ... This takes up the idea of the haloes and aureoles of my earlier sculptures. The necklace is like the aura of an absent body. In my last sculptures, there is something like a body at the centre and a knot around; this knot is then dynamized and becomes a spiral... It is what I am trying to untie at this moment. The knot organizes itself around an axis and defines a void. It is what is at stake in À bruit secret. This tangle is a ‘hyper-knot’ whose heart is absent and for ever inaccessible.” This secret of the centre is Othoniel’s reference to the work of Marcel Duchamp. Duchamp’s Readymade à bruit secret is a ball of string between two brass plates. “Before I had finished, Walter Conrad Arensberg placed something in the interior of the ball, without telling me what it was, and what’s more I didn’t try to find out” Duchamp recalls, “it is a kind of secret between us and, as it made a noise, we called the object Ready-made with hidden noise” Like Duchamp, Jean-Michel Othoniel has a sense of the secret.
Born in 1964 in Saint-Etienne, Jean-Michel Othoniel has been lodger of the French Academy at Villa Medici in Rome (1995-96). He participated in great exhibitions of contemporary art. One of his most famous masterpieces made in glass is "Le Kiosque des Noctambules", an installation at the entrance of the metro station Palais Royal Musée du Louvre in Paris, realised in 2000 for celebrating the centenary of the Parisian subway. He did also one man exhibitions such as his show at The Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice in 1997 and at PS1 in New York in 1998. The Retrospective “My Way” was opened in the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris 2011 and travelled to Leeum Samsung Museum/Plateau, Seoul and Hara Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo. In 2012 the retrospective will be shown at the Macau Museum of Art and at the Brooklyn Museum, NY. Jean-Michel Othoniel lives and works in Paris.
À bruit secret
9 March - 26 May 2012
Galerie Karsten Greve is pleased to announce the upcoming exhibition dedicated to the French artist Jean-Michel Othoniel. Since 1990 Jean-Michel Othoniel’s spectacular glass sculptures have earned him international acclaim. His oversized sculptures – made from murano glass – are being composed to magnificent installations which even have decorated whole house facades or public places.
For his show at Galerie Karsten Greve Jean-Michel Othoniel has created seven new sculptures reflecting the theme Noeud (Knot) accompanied by a set of watercolours. The group of sculptures builds up a surreal environment, leaving a mark of lightness in spite of his weight of many kilos of one single pice. The scenery gets additionally appealing as the beads heavily reflect the illumination. Glass, as a material, has a very ambivalent impact on the viewer: it is not only beautiful and seductive but it is also a very cold, massive and heavy material. Nevertheless, the impression of beauty and magic, predominant to the viewer, is the key for opening the dialogue between artist and viewer, Othoniel refers: “in my opinion, beauty is a trap. First of all you fall in love with it, you are attracted by it, as butterflies are attracted by a flower.” So after entering the world of the artist and his art, the viewer begins to realize the many different meanings and associations linked with his work, beginning with erotic associations over suggestions of precious material ending up with confusion about the disproportionate formats.
In the conversation with Bernard Marcadé for the exhibition catalogue Othoniel explains: “What interests me in these pieces is the question of the hole, of being situated at the centre of the knot... It is the idea of the tornado, the idea of being at the centre of the process and of the sculpture itself, of placing oneself at the eye of the cyclone. My work consists today in placing movement around this centre, in order that it may develop like a sort of tornado or cyclone, that it may become a spiral. ... This takes up the idea of the haloes and aureoles of my earlier sculptures. The necklace is like the aura of an absent body. In my last sculptures, there is something like a body at the centre and a knot around; this knot is then dynamized and becomes a spiral... It is what I am trying to untie at this moment. The knot organizes itself around an axis and defines a void. It is what is at stake in À bruit secret. This tangle is a ‘hyper-knot’ whose heart is absent and for ever inaccessible.” This secret of the centre is Othoniel’s reference to the work of Marcel Duchamp. Duchamp’s Readymade à bruit secret is a ball of string between two brass plates. “Before I had finished, Walter Conrad Arensberg placed something in the interior of the ball, without telling me what it was, and what’s more I didn’t try to find out” Duchamp recalls, “it is a kind of secret between us and, as it made a noise, we called the object Ready-made with hidden noise” Like Duchamp, Jean-Michel Othoniel has a sense of the secret.
Born in 1964 in Saint-Etienne, Jean-Michel Othoniel has been lodger of the French Academy at Villa Medici in Rome (1995-96). He participated in great exhibitions of contemporary art. One of his most famous masterpieces made in glass is "Le Kiosque des Noctambules", an installation at the entrance of the metro station Palais Royal Musée du Louvre in Paris, realised in 2000 for celebrating the centenary of the Parisian subway. He did also one man exhibitions such as his show at The Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice in 1997 and at PS1 in New York in 1998. The Retrospective “My Way” was opened in the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris 2011 and travelled to Leeum Samsung Museum/Plateau, Seoul and Hara Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo. In 2012 the retrospective will be shown at the Macau Museum of Art and at the Brooklyn Museum, NY. Jean-Michel Othoniel lives and works in Paris.