(Paris) After the Louvre, it is the facade of the Palais Garnier in Paris, under scaffolding for works for several months, which finds itself dressed in an ephemeral installation by the artist JR, representing a cave.
From Rio to the Louvre, JR has made a name for himself thanks to his XXL photographic collages deployed from the favelas of Rio to Shanghai, from New York to Nepal.
In Paris, the Frenchman brought 4,000 anonymous people into the Pantheon, displaying their portraits in black and white in several places in the building.
But it was by eclipsing the Louvre Pyramid in 2016 via a monumental trompe l’oeil that it definitively established its popularity.
This new Parisian installation covers the facade of the Palais Garnier, a historic monument which is also one of the two stages of the Paris Opera with the Opéra Bastille.
“Letting appear the entrance to a huge cave opening onto a perspective of rock and light”, this work is a “visual evocation of the origins of ballet and opera, when song and dance celebrated the deities of the Archaic Greece in caves set up for festivities,” the institution said in a statement.
The Opera also announced the projection of extracts of lyrical and choreographic works on this facade, visible from the square, for four evenings (September 9, 10, 16 and 17).
A second installation, a stage curtain, is planned for November.
Restoration work on the facade is planned until the end of 2024.
