Jean-Michel Othoniel

executed in 2013

The work is generally in good condition. Upon close inspection, scattered marks are found on the surface of the work.
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Please note that this work is unique.
8 bricks on 28 lines=224 bricks, 2+2+4=8

Please note that the image is not the actual piece, and is provided for reference only.

The Nature Conservancy is pleased to offer nine exceptional works generously donated by some of the most renowned Chinese and French artists today. Ranging from paintings to sculptures, this wide-ranging selection of works traverses from oil paint, ink on silk, to magnificent gemstones, thoroughly encapsulating the full breadth of contemporary art both within and outside of Asia.

Exhibited at the notable group exhibition “Real Life Stories” in 2012 at the Bergen Art Museum along with nine other renowned Chinese artists, Yue Minjun’s Three Beauties from 2007 brilliantly bridges the aesthetical ideals between the past and the present China. For the composition, Yue’s signatory smiling men are playfully juxtaposed along with contemporary and antique Chinese works of art, not only presenting a comical view into the intertwining threads within the history of art, but also solidifying the artist’s own crucial position within the country’s cultural framework.

Zhang Enli’s The Trees in Autumn 4 from 2013 signifies one of the most popular artistic styles within the artist’s practice. Following his continual motif of trees, the work renders a particular cropped angle of a leafless tree, aesthetically focusing solely on the interplay between fluid shapes and coloured lines. While the gridded style reveals the artist’s method of transforming from photograph to oil paint, the motif of trees essentially recalls the artist’s own fascination in meticulously observing the ethereal reality within daily life.

The image of scissors has continued to evolve and dominate Mao Xuhui’s much respected oeuvre. Created in 2008, Upside-down Scissors exemplifies the delicate transition of the Scissors series that remains to be parallel and synonymous with the artist’s solid position in contemporary Chinese art. Rendered in orange against a yellow background, the image epitomises the visual objectification of scissors and certainly represents an important body of works that critically reflects the artist’s shifting mental state and practice between the 1990s and post-millennium period.

The nine works on offer truly bring together intertwining circles of dialogues that tap dance between nature, art, culture, and ultimately life.

Jean-Michel Othoniel was born in Saint-Etienne, France in 1964 and currently lives and works in Paris. He exhibits in the greatest contemporary art museums, such as the Fondation Cartier in Paris, the MoCA in Miami and more recently at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Hara Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo, the Leeum Samsung Museum of Art/Plateau of Seoul, The Macao Museum of Art, and the Brooklyn Museum of New York, which each possesses a work of the artist in its collections.He collaborates regularly with the architect Peter Marino and conceives original works for Chanel boutiques all over the world. In 2000, he responded for the first time to a commission for a public space and transformed the Paris Metro station of Palais-Royal - Musée du Louvre into The Kiosk of the Nightwalkers. In spring 2013, the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo commissioned him, for its 10th anniversary, to create Kin no Kokoro, a monumental work permanently installed in the Mohri Garden. In 2014, he will install a group of three majestic fountain sculptures in the gardens of the Château of Versailles; Les Belles Danses (The Beautiful Dances) will thus become the first permanent work commissioned from a contemporary artist since King Louis XVI. Jean-Michel Othoniel is represented by Galerie Perrotin (New York, Paris and Hong Kong), Galerie Karsten Greve (Cologne and Saint-Moritz) and Kukje Gallery (Seoul).

Precious Stonewall was born from my experimentation with glass in India. I discovered the primal force of this material of deep hues while working in Firozabad in the heat of furnaces and the dust of pigments. The thousands of bricks that this work is composed of were blown and polished to a gleam, akin to burnished ingots that illuminate the mists of time. This work is a tribute to the piles of bricks, like so many constantly evolving forces, that line Indian roads adorned with hundreds of necklaces, each of whose stones, deceptively naïve, has been hand-cut like a jewel.

Precious Stonewall is inspired by the piles of earth bricks which line the roads of India, waiting, one day, to be used in the construction of a house. The piece pays homage to the builders and architects using bricks who span Western history from Roman times, as well as the construction of monuments in China and India. In collaboration with local Indian glass-makers, it underlines the mission of art to traverse the bigger questions of our society in our contemporary world, from protecting children against child labour to the preservation of our endangered environment. Touched by the cause defended by The Nature Conservancy and by the projects undertaken by the organisation globally, Jean-Michel Othoniel will donate a unique wall piece, unprecedented in its scale and size, which originated from Precious Stonewall.