The new exhibition of my BFF @agnes.varda just opened in Paris @galerieobadia ! She is definitely the best ... go see it !
The amazing chef Massimo Bottura opened a permanent restaurant in Paris on place de la Madeleine, called Le Refettorio Paris. The concept is to use what people think is waste and transform it into opportunities! Every night chefs will turn ordinary ingredients into extraordinary meals. This is not a charity project, it's a cultural one. JR created an art installation for the space.
Invited by The Armory Show, JR’s “So Close,” presented by Artsy and Jeffrey Deitch at the entry to Pier 94, faces us with a line of immigrants, waiting. The archival image from Ellis Island is updated with Syrians’ portraits JR took at the Zaatari refugee camp.
JR and Agnès Varda traveled the French countryside to meet local residents and produce giant photographic portraits of them. Although they are separated in age by more than half a century, Varda and JR both revel in the power of images and in documenting the lives of everyday people. Their movie, FACES PLACES was nominated for an Academy Award for best documentary 2018.
JR and Mauricio Hora, local photographer and historian of Morro da Providência, the first favela of Brazil, set up Casa Amarela in 2009 after JR's project "Women are Heroes." Casa Amarela is a cultural house at the top of the oldest favela of Rio de Janeiro, that is used as a cultural center for its residents. The space is used to offer activities around Art, Education, Culture - art workshops, theater, capoeira, dance, yoga, photography, language classes... Casa Amarela is open everyday for residents, who come after school or work to express their artistic and creative selves. Any artist from all over the world can use the space to give a workshop to the youth of the community.
Invited by Chateau La Coste, JR inaugurated a new installation in December 2017. In the Renzo Piano Pavilion, he has created an optical illusion that appears very simple while achieving technical prowess.
On October 8th, for the last day of his huge scaffolding installation on the Mexican side of the border between the United States and Mexico, JR organized a gigantic picnic on both sides of the fence. Kikito, his family and hundreds of guests came from the US and Mexico to share a meal together. People gathered around the eyes of a Dreamer, eating the same food, sharing the same water, enjoying the same music (half of the band on each side). The wall was forgotten for a few moments ...
More about the project:
The Washington Post: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/
CNN: http://www.cnn.com/2017/10/10/us/border-wall-picnic-trnd/
TIME Magazine: http://time.com/4977283/artist-stages-picnic-on-us-mexico-border/
JR inaugurated last week a huge scaffolding installation on the Mexican side of the border between the United States and Mexico. The piece is best viewed from the US side of the border. An immense image of Kikito, a one year old boy from the city of Tecate, looks playfully over the infamous border wall. Kikito and his family cannot cross the border to see the artwork from the ideal vantage point.
If you are in Southern California, go and see it before October 2nd; the exact location is: bit.ly/JRinTecate
More about the project
in the New York Times : https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/07/arts/design/jr-artist-mexico-border-wall.html
and the New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/news/as-told-to/the-artist-jr-lifts-a-mexican-child-over-the-border-wall
Faces Places, which received the winning prize L'Oeil d'Or of the best documentary at Cannes Festival 2017, is coming out in theaters today in France.
Agnès Varda and JR have similarities: passion and questioning on images in general, and more precisely on places and devices used to show them, share them and exhibit them.
Agnès chose cinema. JR chose to create outdoor pastings.
When Agnès and JR met in 2015, they immediately wanted to work together, to shoot a movie in France, far from cities, travelling with JR's (magical) photo truck. Wether it was random encounters or prepared, they opened up to other people, listened to them, photographed them, and sometime pasted them.
The movie also tells the story of their friendship, which grew along the shooting, between surprises and teasing, laughing at their differences.
For his third intervention at Palais de Tokyo, JR unveils a monumental fresco of over 150 m2, forming a singular portrait of the inhabitants of Clichy-Montfermeil (Seine-Saint-Denis), suburbs where the popular rebellions that shook France in 2005 began.
After being displayed at Palais de Tokyo from April 2nd to April 13th, the work will then be installed durably at the Cité des Bosquets (Montfermeil).
More pictures below.
To celebrate the 3 years of the collaboration between JR and the New York City Ballet, Social Animals presents a new lithograph by JR, Paper Interactions # 13
4 colors lithograph printed by Marinoni machine
White paper BFK Rives - 270 grams
Numbered /180 on the left side corner
Signed by JR in the right corner
70 x 100 cm / 27,5 x 39,5 in. approx