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JR debuts latest Italian commission 'La Nascita' for Milan Design Week

2024-04-11T13:03:00-04:00

French street art pioneer JR has debuted his latest piece, a massive illusory trompe l’oeil piece animating the facade of Milan’s Stazione Centrale railway station, in advance of the start of Milan Design Week in the Italian cultural nexus.

His latest commission is titled La Nascita (Italian for “the birth”) and will run until May 1st, following two previous Italian projects at the Palazzo Strozzi in Florence and Palazzo Farnese in Rome that were completed in 2021.

“In spaces that have social issues, my work is about bringing people together. In a place like this, a huge range of people come to catch the train. When they find themselves in front of an exhibition, they will suddenly have a different kind of interaction,” he told The Art Newspaper at its unveiling.

More of our coverage of Milan Design Week can be found here.

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Artist JR's latest installation transforms the Great Pyramids of Giza, a top-ical new NFT

2021-10-22T19:02:00-04:00

As part of a new exhibition at Egypt’s Great Pyramids of Giza, French artist JR has transformed the 4,500-year-old World Heritage Site into a haunting levitated mass, done over in steel and mesh, that will also be minted as a 4,591-piece NFT representing his first foray into the newfound digital realm .

Titled Forever is Now, the exhibition is put on by Art D’Egypte with support from UNESCO and the country’s Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities.

“Egyptian culture is a gift to humanity, and the purpose of this exhibition is to showcase these treasures in a dialogue with the contemporary on an international scale,” Art D’Egypt founder Nadine A. Ghaffar said in a statement. “Ancient Egypt has influenced artists from around the world, and so we bring the world to Egypt and Egypt to the world through art.”

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JR says his latest installation is in some ways an expansion on his 2016 Louvre installation...

Artist JR 'cracks open' Florence's Palazzo Strozzi with monumental optical illusion installation

2021-03-22T19:10:00-04:00

Titled La Ferita, Italian for “The Wound,” the work creates an optical illusion of a great gash running through the institution’s external walls. Through the cracks, those on the outside can once again peer into a black-and-white vision of the interior of the shuttered building, with some of Florence’s famous artworks and cultural heritage on view.

The new site-specific trompe-l'œil installation — measuring 28 meters/92 feet tall and 33 meters/108 feet wide — by prolific French artist JR opened on March 19, shortly after many major Italian cities were ordered back under another COVID-19 lockdown.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Palazzo Strozzi (@palazzostrozzi)

"By including iconic works of Florence’s art heritage and directly citing real places such as the library of the Istituto Nazionale di Studi sul Rinascimento, JR proposes a direct and evocative reflection on accessibility not only to Palazzo Strozzi but to all cultural sites in the era of Covid-19," explains the project description.

Related on Archinect: How Art and Design Museums Switched to Working From Home and Sharpened Their Digital Experience. Photo: Wikimedia Commons user BRENAC/CC-BY-SA-3.0.

"Palazzo Strozzi becomes the spectacular stage for a symbolic yet painful wound suffered by all cultural institutions both in Italy and abro...

For its 30th birthday, Artist JR creates a large-scale optical illusion at the Louvre Pyramid

2019-04-01T19:05:00-04:00

When built in 1989 by Chinese-American architect I.M. Pei, the glass pyramid was derided as a sacrilegious addition to the historic Louvre Museum. But three decades later, the once-reviled Louvre Pyramid has become a beloved Paris landmark and highly-visited tourist attraction.

This weekend, the iconic project celebrated its 30th anniversary. For the festivities, the Paris museum enlisted the French street artist JR who, three years ago, covered the pyramid in a giant trompe l’oeil that made it disappear behind a giant black-and-white photo.

A continuation on this prior piece, his latest work saw the help of 400 volunteers, who worked for four days to surround the glass pyramid with 2,000 strips of paper. His latest stunt installation, the collage created the optical illusion that the pyramid was rising from a rock quarry.

Shortly after its announcement, it was destroyed underfoot as visitors left the paper collage in shreds. On the project's planned destruction, JR said "the imag...

JR's "Wrinkles Of The City", portraying the faces affected by gentrification and rapid urbanization, hits Istanbul

2017-05-04T23:42:00-04:00

If I was a poet, I would speak of Istanbul If I were a musician, my music would belong to Istanbul If I was a painter, I would paint Istanbul -Mihail

Prolific French artist JR continues to produce impactful work, following up his latest public exhibition with a special installation of his “Wrinkles of the City” series. First launched in 2008, the series is meant to visually portray the faces affected by gentrification and rapid urbanization in the world’s largest cities. Accordingly, JR spent the past two weeks in the alleyways and rooftops of Istanbul, forcing residents to confront the elderly’s personal stories through singular images.

In honor of the Olympics, French artist JR installs giant athletes in Rio

2016-08-04T13:16:00-04:00

The French artist who goes by JR, known for flyposting large-scale photographs in cities around the world, has set up shop in Rio, just in time for the Olympic opening ceremony this Friday. As part of his ongoing worldwide Inside Out project, and under the invitation of the IOC, he's installed two giant sculptures of athletes in the city, posed in such a way that Rio itself is their stadium.

One is a diver, in a swan pose over the Barra da Tijuca, the other a high-jumper, curving over the top of the Hilton Santos in the Flamengo neighborhood. The athletes are made from printed fabric stretched over a scaffolding frame, and have been under construction since June.

h/t The Spaces

Check out more news from Rio:

Artist JR covers the I.M. Pei's Pyramid in giant image of the Louvre

2016-05-24T13:28:00-04:00

Whether it be the Middle East, the favelas of Rio, slums of Kenya, New York, Le Havre or Shanghai, JR’s works leave no one indifferent, because they return our gaze and cut to the very heart of our innermost selves. [...] Invited by the “biggest museum in the world”—which also generates the most selfies—JR has set his sights on one of the Louvre’s symbols, the Pyramid, which he intends to transform with a surprising anamorphic image.

The artist JR, best known for his series of giant portraits wheat-pasted in cities around the world, has been commissioned to create a piece for the Louvre. Documenting the progress on his Instagram account, JR has been covering I.M. Pei's iconic glass Pyramid with an anamorphic image of the edifice behind it: the Sully Wing of the Louvre.

"I will never forget this day. Today I'm going to make the Louvre Pyramid disappear," JR told the Humans of Paris Facebook account. "I want to make the Louvre Pyramid disappear because I want people to see themselves alone, just their head and the Louvre.

"I find it funny seeing people taking selfies all day in front of the pyramid but always with their back to the Louvre," he continues. "It says a lot about our society where people turn their back on things and focus on themselves."

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