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Jean-Michel Othoniel Goetheanum Born in 1964 Rüttiweg 45 Live and works in Paris 4143 ,

With a marked taste for metamorphosis, su- +41 61 706 42 42 blimation, and transmutation, Jean-Michel [email protected] https://www.goetheanum.org Othoniel shows a fondness for materials with reversible properties. He started out, at the beginning of the 1990s, with works made out of sulfur, showing them at the Kassel documenta in 1992. A turning point in his output came following these years when he began to work with obsidian stone and glass. Working with the Access from to Goetheanum, finest glassmakers in Basel ever since, he explores the properties of a material that Public transport: 20min subsequently became a hallmark of his work. Tramway line 10 from Basel SBB Jean-Michel Othoniel is represented by to Dornach- station. Perrotin, Karsten Greve and Kukje Galleries. In 2011, an important exhibition held at the By car: 15min Centre Pompidou Paris presenting the en- tire gamut of his artistic practice retraced his Highway from Basel to Delémont, career. Invisibility Faces exit Reinach-Sud, In May 2015, the artist revealed The Beautiful follow Dornach, then Goetheanum. Dances, three foutain sculptures installed on Jean-Michel Othoniel the ponds of the new Water Theatre grove of Versailles. It is the first permanent com- June 14 - July 5, 2015 mission in the gardens of the Palace since Daily 8am - 10pm three hundred years. Goetheanum Invisibility Face, Othoniel 2015 Obsidian block faceted after Othoniel’s drawing Chestnut carved wood base, Carved obsidian stone, 85 x 60 x 45 cm Glassworks Studio, Basel Baukunst, Dornach

At the beginning of May, after four years The form of this unspectacular, but natural sulphur. It was here, that he first of preparation, a new permanent work by yet expressive lamp carved in wood learned about obsidian, volcanic glass. Jean-Michel Othoniel, consisting of an caught his interest and lead him to the Obsidian does not appear as we expect impressive three-part fountain Les belles carpenters’ workshop, Baukunst, on the glass to behave. Even coloured glass has Danses, was inaugurated at the château Goetheaum campus, the same place a certain transparency. On the contrary, de Versailles. where once Dubach worked and probably obsidian looks totally opaque, and yet there And now, Othoniel at the Goetheanum. manufactured the very lamp. In colla- is a kind of reversed transparency as if light One can hardly imagine a more unfore- boration with Baukunst and Glassworks is coming from within. seen leap than from the pre-enlightened (Münchenstein), the new body of work How is this possible? Maybe it is this pa- Versailles to the radical understanding of Invisibility Faces has been realised. radoxical sensation of darkness and light the human condition expressed in Rudolf There is another link, maybe more hidden that provide obsidian with its mysterious Steiner’s Goetheanum, built in 1924- and yet to be discovered, that has to do presence. Now we can understand why 1928. What could possibly be Othoniel’s with Othoniel’s fascination with the mate- Othoniel chose the unconventional structu- interest in this building and its language of rials and their inherent transformative red title. It is not about invisible faces but forms? The initial spark was a small lamp possibilities. about a countenance of the invisible. by Goetheanum sculptor Oswald Dubach Twenty-six years ago, at the beginning from the 1930s which he found in an antique of his career, Othoniel made a trip to the Johannes Nilo shop in Paris. Aeolian Islands north of Sicily to look for