The Gallery Emmanuel Perrotin is pleasured to announce the solo exhibition of Jean-Michel Othoniel in Miami, from March 8th to April 5th, 2008.
The artist has realized a monumental installation titled “Diary of Happiness”: a giant abacus 7 feet (2,2 meters) high x 15 feet (4,50 meters) long, each bead of which is made of Murano glass and represents a day of the year.
This work suggests slowing down time to ponder the days passing by, as done with a chaplet. It is also questioning the lost paradise and an invitation to seek happiness. The abacus frame is black on one side, white on the other one. At the beginning of the year, all the beads are placed on the dark side and it is our job to move them to the light, day after day, in order to make each year unique.
"Jean-Michel Othoniel seized on glass as if it were an abandoned, undeveloped plot containing a conceptual treasure. We sometimes hesitate between the sacred and the profane in defining this esthetic, which echoes across past centuries marked by liturgical rituals and religious processions, but alsoby the law of desire and its cohort, of sentimental fantasies." Emile Soulier
