JEAN-MICHEL OTHONIEL
TAIPEI DANGDAI ART & IDEAS 2024
BOOTH E06
TAIPEI NANGANG EXHIBITION CENTER
MAY 9th — 12th, 2024
Perrotin is pleased to participate in the fifth edition of Taipei Dangdai Art & Ideas 2024, with a solo booth dedicated to French artist Jean- Michel Othoniel (born 1964). Othoniel’s enchanting aesthetics revolve around the notion of emotional geometry. Through the repetition of modular elements such as glass bricks or his signature beads, he creates exquisite artworks that reflect the complexity of human nature. Oscillating between fragility and strength, the infinite and the tangible, rationality and sensuality, Othoniel’s artworks embrace and transcend opposites in order to expand our conception of reality, reconciling contradictions and opening up realms of wonders.
Since 1993, the French artist has been working in collaboration with some of the finest glassblowers in the world on the formal and chemical properties of glass, exploring its manifold possible metamorphoses and substantial variability. A product derived from the transfiguration of matter and melted sand, glass, in essence, is rooted within nature and reflects the exuberance of its potentials and beauty. Similarly, like an alchemist, Othoniel sublimates natural elements, recomposing and transforming them according to his emotions and to the cultural context he is working in.
The solo presentation at the Taipei Dangdai will focus on Othoniel’s new works from different series — Hanging Lovers, Precious Stonewall, and Wonder Block. A monumental Necklace will be the highlight of the booth.
The artist creates a specific composition for the booth built like a musical partition. He presents hanging Necklaces and Hanging Lovers, as well as wall sculptures Precious Stonewall. These works will illuminate the booth walls with radiant tones of blue, green, pink, purple. The Necklace is one of Othoniel’s iconic artworks. Monumental in size, suspended in space and cascading down, it unfolds its sensual body like a living creature, combining the preciousness of a rare piece of jewelry with a sense of robustness derived from its weight and gigantic size. Just like bricks, beads emerge as a unitary element that can combine endlessly to reflect living forms of the universe.
The Hanging Lovers hang from a single thread. Inside the lower and transparent beads of the threads nestled smaller glass spheres whose delicate hues echo the palette of the pieces themselves. The colors of the glass derive from mixing pigments, powdered minerals and metal with melted sand; Othoniel purposefully and carefully chooses the spectrum of his colors to retain authentic and natural shades. This series unfolds in pink, green, crystal and alessandrita purple, a rare mineral known for its color-changing properties: purple under daylight, dark grey by nightfall. The works are suspended in space as well as in time with their solidarity preserves the memory of the unstable liquid state that preceded.
The Precious Stonewall series was developed following Othoniel’s residency in India, where he worked with Indian glassmakers and encountered mirrored glass for the first time. On the road from Delhi to Firozabad, a city with an age-old glassmaking tradition, he was struck by the stacks of bricks accumulated in the hope of building a house. To the artist, those stacks of bricks are a representation of energy and hope. In bricks, Othoniel has found a universal element, a common denominator between cultures and one that has traversed the history of humanity. They are also historically linked to revolutionary movements — the Precious Stonewall series is a poetic reference to the Stonewall uprising in New York city in 1969, which is generally considered the impetus for the modern gay rights movement.
A similar set of visual complexities and otherworldly spaces are created from the elegant glass bricks that Othoniel has produced with glassmaker artisans from Firozabad, India since 2009. Rather than simply reflecting light, the Wonder Block series also concentrates it because of the slightly puckered shape of the brick. When combined into his brick altar sculptures, brick wall sculptures, or even environments they create a transcendence that acts as a sculptural portal, captivating us with beauty and transcendence. The altars are steel-like in their form, but their magic lies in the almost alchemical way they transform light into something even more boundless through our ocular perception of their shimmer.
