Jean-Michel Othoniel, " MY WAY "

An artist who has a passion for all sorts of metamorphoses, sublimations and transmutations, Jean-Michel Othoniel has a predilection for materials with reversible properties. From March 2, 2011, the Centre Pompidou will be the first major cultural institution to put on a one-man show of Jean-Michel Othoniel's work from the beginning of his career in 1987 to the present day, with more than 80 pieces on display.

In collaboration with the artist, the Centre Pompidou will offer a retrospective of his plastic work entitled My Way. Composed of an ensemble of 24 hitherto unseen works, the exhibition is mapped out in different stages involving research and experimentation up until the mid-90s, when Othoniel began to use sensitive materials like sulphur, phosphorus and wax, weaving his way between beauty and repulsion. The artist explores the boundary between the organic world and the natural world and questions the limits of the genre. After discovering glass, its color and the infinite artistic possibilities of the medium which combines strength and fragility, Othoniel's work took on a more sculptural quality and acquired a new monumentalism.


After the Centre Pompidou, the exhibition curated by Catherine Grenier, will travel to the Leeum Samsung Museum of Art in Seoul in the summer of 2011 and then to the Hara Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo in the fall, and last to the Brooklyn Museum in New York in the spring of 2012.


Jean-Michel Othoniel was born in 1964 in Saint-Etienne, France. He lives and works in Paris.


" My Way," (reference to the song by Frank Sinatra) is not a cover version of the classic. The song evokes instead a more solitary, individual path for me. A path which is mine in part, while also amidst various movements in contemporary art that I have passed through over the last 20 years. In addition, My Way is a title that can easily be understood in countries where the exhibition will be held, that might be called a ' mid-career retrospective.'

Le Bateau de larmes, Boat of Tears, 2004

Murano glass, metal, wood

@Jean-Michel Othoniel / Galerie Perrotin, Paris

Riviere blanche, White River, 2003
Murano glass, steel
@Jean-Michel Othoniel / Adagp, Paris 2010 / Galerie Perrotin

Le noeud de Lacan, Lacan's Knot, 2009
Mirrored glass, metal
@Jean-Michel Othoniel / Adagp, Paris 2010 / Galerie Perrotin

Amant suspendu, Suspended Lover, 1999
Murano glass
@Jean-Michel Othoniel / Adagp, Paris 2010 / Galerie Perrotin

Diary of Happiness, 2008
Murano glass, lacquered wood
@Jean-Michel Othoniel / Adagp, Paris 2010, Galerie Perrotin

Les Mises a feu, 1989
Explosives fuses
@Jean-Michel Othoniel / Adagp, Paris 2010 / Galerie Perrotin

Le Petit Theatre de Peau d'Ane, Little Donkey-Skin Theatre, 2004
Ensemble composed of 4 dressing tables, glass, lacquered wood, embroideries, lace , fabric, silk
@Jean-Michel Othoniel / Adagp, Paris 2010, Galerie Perrotin

Courtesy Centre Pompidou
My Way, March 2 - May 23, 2011
Galerie Perrotin