Contemporary Art Installns #17bis: JR – La Caverne – EXHIBITION

These preparatory sketches, which have become works of art in their own right, are created using a single technique that incorporates several different media. Firstly, photography. JR ‘shoots’ the Pont-Neuf from various angles and selects the images. Then, drawing. In his studio, the artist draws and then cuts out the mineral-like forms that the actual Caverne du Pont Neuf will take on, drawing inspiration from landscape features observed and gathered from various mountainous or underwater sites: in doing so, he foreshadows its final appearance.

A tribute, forty-one years on, to Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s ‘Wrapped’ Pont-Neuf Protected content , *La Caverne du Pont Neuf* follows in the tradition of the grand trompe-l’oeil works created by JR in recent years at the Louvre, the Paris Opera and on the façades of Italian palaces. Inspired by the theme of Plato’s cave and debates on perception (what is seeing? does seeing evoke a sense of reality or the imaginary?), these works invite us to reflect on pretence, illusion and the formidable powers of art’s artifice – an art capable of transforming the world, of projecting our consciousness into other, unprecedented and unheard-of realms, as well as, in its public dimension, of fostering a sense of community.

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