Loving Landscape

The paths of Jean-Michel Othoniel and the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain crossed during his artist residency in 1989. The sculptures that the Fondation Cartier holds in its Collection illustrate the artist’s di erent creative periods, shaped by his research into new forms of iconography and his discoveries of new techniques
and materials. Accordingly, Jean-Michel Othoniel’s rst works explored unusual materials, like sulfur, which could be hollowed out and become a work and the cast for a work that does not exist. His more recent works were made either at Marseille’s CIRVA in the South of France, or in Murano, near Venice, where local artisans still practice traditional techniques. Jean-Michel Othoniel’s works evoke and elicit desire,
such as Paysage amoureux, a glass-beaded curtain, whose heart or ring-shapes suggest ex-votos or erotic objects.