HONG KONG.- Galerie Perrotin, Hong Kong, presents the solo exhibition, “Monumental Sculptures”, of the French contemporary artist, Jean-Michel Othoniel. He was born in 1964 in Saint-Étienne, France. He now lives and works in Paris.

Othoniel creates forms that are inherently poetic by rooting his works in abstractness and contemplation. In this solo exhibition at Galerie Perrotin, Hong Kong, the artist has collaborated with a Feng Shui Master in determining the forms and colors of his sculptures. As an outcome of the artist’s psychology, the individualism and the sentiments invested in the forms originate in human life generally. While Feng Shui is a Chinese philosophical system of harmonizing the human existence with the surrounding environment, the idea conforms to the artistic approach of Othoniel, who constantly seeks to relate his works with regard to the nature, to the world and to the space they inhabit. The rotation of the beads is the gesture and movement of these monumental glass and aluminum sculpture in the gallery room, through which the sculptor brings out the intrinsic beauty and variability of the knots he invented. Due to the abstract and minimal quality of these sculptures, we are confronted by a dialogue of visibility, of whether the space is adorned by the works or actually the works are celebrated by the space.

“Double Collier Autoporté Or”, imposes its presence and orderliness over the entrance of the building. As for the forms of the three knots sculptures, “Nœud rose miroir”, “Nœud rouge miroir” and “Nœud ambre miroir”, that reside in the main space of the gallery, Othoniel has opted for a kind of emotional geometry.

Jean-Michel Othoniel has always shown a strong passion towards commissioning for specific sites. In 2000, he responded for the first time to a commission for a public space and transformed the Paris subway entrance at the Palais- Royal-Musée du Louvre station, into a “Pavilion of the Nightwalkers”. The Hara Museum of Contemporary Art has invited him in 2009 to create a new sculpture in Gunma, “Kokoro”, installed at the entrance of the museum. In 2013, the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo commissioned him, for its 10th anniversary, “Kin no Kokoro”, a permanent work in the Mohri Garden. In September 2014, he will inaugurate a group of three majestic fountain sculptures in the gardens of the Palace of Versailles, at the Water Theatre grove reinterpreted by the landscape designer Louis Benech; “The Beautiful Dances”, will thus become the first permanent work commissioned from a contemporary artist since Louis XVI.

The exhibition “Monumental Sculptures” is part of the festival Le French May 2014.

Born in 1964 in Saint-Étienne, France, Jean-Michel Othoniel lives and works in Paris.