ART-PRESENTATION: Jean-Michel Othoniel,Dark Matters Part II

Jean-Michel Othoniel made sculptures using sulphur and wax in his early work. A turning point in his output came following year when he began employing glass. Working with the finest glassmakers in Murano, he explored the properties of a material that subsequently became a hallmark of his work. Seven years later, his first piece of public sculpture “Le Kiosque des Noctambule”’ was installed on Place Colette above the Palais Royal-Musée du Louvre metro station in Paris (Part I).

By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Perrotin Gallery Archive

With an ensemble of new and original works, some specially created for the exhibition Jean-Michel Othoniel’s solo exhibition “Dark Matters”, marks the inauguration of the whole building of Perrotin Gallery in New York. The artist’s latest creations in New York are characterized by the figure of the oxymoron, bringing together the monumental and the fragile, the austere and the marvelous, minimalism and baroque. In Othoniel’s enchanted world, heaven and hell have the same face: one of a phantasmagorical universe over which the pain and judgment of our human realm have no hold. The phantasmagoria receives and unifies opposites, be they moral judgments (good and evil) or aesthetic divisions (beautiful and ugly, abstract and figurative). It attains the artistic fulfillment sought by the Romantics. Mixing polished metal with mirrored glass, the works in this new exhibition are devoted to storms and the violence of the elements. The central pieces, a spring gushing forth from a blue grotto and gigantic tornadoes spinning like mobiles, are surrounded by walls of mirrored bricks, cascading necklaces and large suspended glass beads knots. The sculptures seek the violence of shapes; they demonstrate the perfect balance of hanging ellipses and the reflections between them. The artist also draws from his fascination for observing the mathematical combinations of reflections endlessly multiplied, which gave rise to a dialogue with Mexican mathematician Aubin Arroyo. The images he develops in his research echo the reflecting sculptures that Othoniel created in homage to Jacques Lacan.

Info: Perrotin Gallery, 130 Orchard Street, New York, Duration: 3/3-15/4/18, Days & Hours: Wed-Sun 10:00-18:00, www.perrotin.com