In the kingdom of the Black Prince, Othoniel transforms darkness into light

By Jean-Michel Othoniel the general public is especially familiar with the poetic Kiosque des Noctambules which, almost 25 years ago, transformed the entrance to the Palais Royal-Musée du Louvre metro station into a visual enchantment, like something out of a tale of the brothers Grimm or Perrault. Born in Saint-Etienne in 1964, the man who was elected on November 14, 2018 to the Academy of Fine Arts (sculpture section) is in reality an alchemist who never ceases to question the multiple properties of materials (wax, sulfur, glass, etc.) to reveal the infinite palette of metamorphoses.

Transfigure spaces

« Poeticize and re-enchant the world » seems to be his motto, as this protean artist strives to reveal the beauty of a grove or a water theater in the heart of the garden of Versailles, to bring forth 114 fountains for the new national museum of Qatar, including the jets draw dreams of Arabic calligraphy in space, or even create, for the thirty years of the Louvre pyramid, this rose resembling a celestial necklace which now lines the walls of the courtyard Puget…

But make no mistake! If they appear, at first glance, “amiable”, the artistic interventions of Jean-Michel Othoniel are in no way “frivolous”, even less fortuitous. Bringing together the fragile and the perennial, the poetic and the political, the former resident of the Villa Medici likes to question the material, to play on scales and false pretenses, to slip gracefully into unusual places or places loaded with history.

From Angoulême Cathedral to the Imperial Palace in Seoul, via the Brooklyn Botanic Garden in New York, the artist works to transfigure spaces to imbue them with an aura of dreams and wonder. From his vast workshop in Montreuil called “la Solfatara”, Jean-Michel Othoniel then became demiurge and conductor, accumulating drawings and models of projects that his assistants would have the heavy task of realizing to the size dictated by the spirit of the place…

Between “ziggurats” and “ectoplasmic clouds”

It is a real shock that grips the visitor when he descends the damp stairs which take him into the former guard room of the bloodthirsty “Black Prince” which constitutes the base of the old episcopal palace of Montauban. The only existing trace of a defensive work that the English conquerors, while fleeing, left unfinished, this medieval room dating from 1369 struggles to hide its sinister past as a torture room…

« Exhibiting where the past of war resonates is overwhelming, which is why I imagined an in situ work which takes place on the very scene of the dramas of our past and present history. This could only question me, me whose work aims to enchant the world », explains the artist in front of the three gigantic “towers of Babel” in blown glass brick which rise, like improbable ziggurats, towards the vaults of this ogival room.

Hesitating between dream and nightmare, gravity and weightlessness, celestial light and abyssal darkness, these concretions look like “ ectoplasmic clouds » (to use the very term used by the artist) hypnotize the eye like those mirages that we sometimes see emerging in the heart of the Arabian deserts. The only glimmer of hope within this sepulchral mastaba, a small block of glowing crystal – an allusion to the famous ruby ​​of the “Black Prince” which is now displayed on the imperial crown worn by George VI and Elizabeth II, before Charles III – vibrates with its light intensity. “ Evoking the hope and sacredness of ever-renewing life […], these three tall sculptures try to erase and heal the criminal traces that surround us », writes Jean-Michel Othoniel in the little booklet which accompanies the exhibition.

Peaks of virtuosity

But here again, the artist impresses with his ability to give substance and reality to his wildest dreams. Experimenting with the multiple properties of glass since the 1990s, Jean-Michel Othoniel continues to push his research into the extreme delicacy of this material further. After working for years with the glassmakers of Murano, the artist discovered in 2010, during a stay in India, the technical prowess of the glassmakers of Firozabad. From this fruitful meeting, the artist developed many projects, including these “ vertiginous mirrored brick concretions » soaring towards the sky to better defy the laws of gravity. Metaphysical and mystical at the same time, the installation of Jean-Michel Othoniel is thus a formidable challenge, “ architectural madness » as much as « contemporary ruin » condemned to disappear…

“Othoniel. On the Ruins of the Black Prince »
Ingres Bourdelle Museum, 19 rue de l’Hôtel de Ville, 82 000 Montauban
Until January 5, 2025