OTHONIEL VERS PDF ANG - Fondation Cartier pour l'art ...

Othoniel
Crystal Palace
October 31, 2003—January 11, 2004

Press release
Press Opening on Thursday, October 30, 2003 at 3:00 pm
The Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain
presents Crystal Palace, a unique exhibition by Othoniel,
from October 31, 2003 to January 11, 2004.
After taking part in the artist’s workshops in Jouy-en-Josas (1989) and
after participating in the Azur (1993) and Amours (1997) exhibitions,
Othoniel is back with an original project entirely conceived as a pendant
to Jean Nouvel’s glass building. In much the same spirit as his
Kiosque des Noctambules (2000) which re-interpreted, after Hector
Guimard, the entrance to the Palais-Royal subway station, he invites the
public to take another walk, this time through the ground floor spaces
and into the gardens of the Fondation Cartier.
His interest in metamorphoses, sublimations, and
transmutations led Jean-Michel Othoniel (born
in 1964; lives in Paris) to privilege materials with
reversible properties. His sculptures in sulfur, lead, wax or
phosphorus attracted attention, and he rapidly emerged
on the international scene, exhibiting in Paris, Tokyo, New
York, Berlin… His sources of inspiration are minimalism
and Arte povera, the artistic expressions of Broodthaers or
Duchamp, and, in the literary field, Borges, Gracq, and
Roussel. A special fascination—at once melancholic and
scientific—for the major developments of the 19th century
(photography, traveling, museums…), impelled him in
the late ‘80s to embrace other forms of creativity, including
sculpture, drawing, photography, writing, dance and
video.
In 1992 he was invited to show some of his sulfur
sculptures in the Documenta in Kassel, Germany. In 1994
he participated in the Féminin/Masculin exhibition at the
Pompidou Center where he presented one of his major
works, My Beautiful Closet.
It was in 1993 that Othoniel irremediably introduced
glass into his work. He began experimenting with its properties
together with master glassmaker, Oscar Zanetti, in
Murano. The artist molds the desired shapes in clay, and
the master glassmaker then takes them and reproduces
them along with their formal imperfections and irregularities.
“Glass has a memory. If you injure a ball of melted
glass by making an incision or any kind of cut into it, the
glass will heal up. But once it cools, the wound will reappear.
So Zanetti used these wounds to create some of the
shapes I was looking for.”
Blown-glass beads were thus made in Venice, as well as
at the CIRVA—the International Glass Art Research Center
founded in Marseille in 1986—and then fashioned into
necklaces and enigmatic harnesses, a combination of jewelry,
decoration and erotica.
Transformation, transmutation of matter, rites of passage
from one state to another, all of these reflect another rite
which is fundamental to the artist’s work, that of traveling,
with the memories brought back from gardens
explored or secluded dwellings. In these spaces of ultimate
freedom, open to reversibility and chance encounters,
Othoniel sets up his glass creations for the fleeting
pleasure of a temporary traveling companion—who is
both a stranger and an accomplice. Thus, in 1996 his
necklaces were suspended among the bamboo in the Villa
Medicis gardens in Rome, then from the trees in the
Venetian gardens of the Peggy Guggenheim Collection,
and in 1999 in the Alhambra and the Generalife in
Grenada. His pieces live, mingle with the old stones or
the foliage, like so many organic excrescences that absorb
Harnais, 1997
Garden of the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice
Private collection, Paris
Above left:
Les amants suspendus, 1999
Collection of the artist

the shadows and diffract the light. “I like to give visitors
the impression that they are alone with the work in an
enclosed Garden of Eden, an exotic seraglio somewhere
outside of this world. My glass sculptures are to be discovered
walking among them.”
Like the tour through Roussel’s Locus Solus park of wondrous
inventions, the Crystal Palace exhibition could start
off in the gardens of the Fondation Cartier.
A medley of ten poles, each richly decorated at the top
like so many lofty banner bearers, greets the visitor, inviting
him or her to take a stroll through this dreamily-named
Cortège endormi. Up in the air, beads and pendants sway in
the wind, are illuminated with solar rays, describe a celestial
course, suggest a path that can always diverge…
The pieces presented in the exhibition were specifically
created for Crystal Palace with the help and expertise
of the CIRVA. The transformation took place in their blast
furnaces, the violence of the fire turning the silica first to
liquid, then making it malleable, transparent or opalescent,
an iridescent rainbow of astonishing colors.
Othoniel’s obsessions—desire, pleasure, sensuality, the
erotic, the religious—are to be found in this metamor-
phosis. In it, one sees the gesture, the hand that worked
it. One thinks of the numerous ex-votos in the chapels
of Naples.
The visitor might also come across one of his gigantic
necklaces hanging from a tree, a reference to the absent
body which has haunted the artist’s work for many years.
Poles and necklaces are also on display in the various
spaces inside the Fondation Cartier.Those on the “inside”
are visible from the “outside”, and vice versa, showing off
their glittering colors, their transparency, the transparency
of the building. Hanging from a metal cable, the necklaces
lie heavily on the ground. Crystal beads inlaid with golden
leaves, silver beads, deep amethyst or amber.
In a rain of gold, Pluie d’or, two immense embroidered
veils interrupt the gaze and offer, here and there, via
restricted openings, a few indiscreet windows set off by
gold sequins. The thrill of being a voyeur. Delicate expression
of another type of handicraft, the embroiderers of
Rochefort and their nimble fingers gliding over the fabric.
One discovers, through the theatricality of the curtain, a
stately bed with a glass canopy, fragile, yet imposing, created
by the Salviati glassblowers in Murano, masters in the
art since the 19th century. Once again, the hands-on gesture
is delegated. “Since I started using glassmakers to
make my works, I’ve become used to dealing with interpretations
of my own proposals. I’m also able to recognize
myself in someone else’s handiwork, a bit like a composer
listening to the music he has written being played by a performer
he has chosen.” As for the felt quilt, it provides a
glimpse into the subtle, quasi-ascetic art of haberdashery.
As daylight fades, the blown-glass lanterns shed halos
of shimmering gold over the spaces. Refraction of light
and colors in every glass cabochon. Isolated from the rest
of the Cortège endormi, the Unicorne, a mock sedan-chair
that looks too fragile to be safe, sits royally on its silver
trestles.
The Fontaine du plaisir et des larmes, with its little elements
of glossy, glowing molten glass, is a fountain of
frustrated temptation, evoking the pleasure one would
feel if one could just run one’s fingers over its curves, an
allusion to the forbidden caress.
Across from Paysage amoureux, a bead curtain that is
over 10 meters long, the piece Lagrimas allows the imagination
to drift through an aquatic world peopled by
mysterious Cartesian divers.
L’arbre aux colliers, 2003
Garden of the Museum of Modern Art, New Orleans
Collection Sidney Besthoff
First page:
Le Kiosque des Noctambules, 2000
Palais-Royal—Musée du Louvre Metro Station, Paris
© RATP – Photo Gilles Aligon
Othoniel, Crystal Palace will be accompanied by a bilingual
(French/English) catalogue and will be presented at the
Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami from May 28
to August 31, 2004.
Press Information
Linda Chenit assisted by Nathalie Desvaux
tel. 33 (0)1 42 18 56 77/65 fax 33 (0)1 42 18 56 52
email lchenit@fondation.cartier.fr
online images/fondation.cartier.fr
261, boulevard Raspail 75014 Paris
Tel. 33 (0)1 42 18 56 50 fax 33 (0)1 42 18 56 52
fondation.cartier.fr
The Othoniel, Crystal Palace exhibition is organized with the support
of the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain under the aegis
of the Fondation de France, and with the sponsorship of Cartier.