JR: DANS LA LUMIÈRE
Perrotin presents Dans La Lumière by the artist JR. The exhibition presents a series of recent artworks inspired by the CHIROPTERA project created specially for the Opéra de Paris in November 2023.
June 7 - July 27, 2024
In his Natural History, Pliny the Elder recounts an ancient Greek legend about the origins of art. The young Corinthian Kora, daughter of the potter Butades of Sicyon (Dibutade), is saddened to see her beloved leave and wants to preserve his memory forever. Using the light of a lantern, she traces the outline of his shadow on her wall.
This story is reminiscent of Plato’s more famous “Allegory of the Cave” in Book VII of The Republic. Here, human beings have been chained in a cave since birth. With their backs turned to the outside world and its natural light, they only see the shadows on the wall (once again) of everything that passes before the cave’s entrance
On Sunday, November 12, from 7:00 pm to 9:00 pm, over twenty-five thousand spectators gathered at the Place de l’Opéra, each bringing a light source to illuminate what was about to unfold before their dazzled eyes: CHIROPTERA, a unique ballet performance devised by JR, Damien Jalet, and Thomas Bangalter. The performance began with the striking shadow of principal ballerina Amandine Albisson, creating contours so intense and powerful that even Kora and Butades of Sicyon would have been unable to capture them.
This exceptional event will live long in the audience’s memory, remembered as a moment of togetherness, unforgettable images, movements, sounds, lights, emotions, vibrations, and positive energies. The dancers’ (or bats’) distinctive black-and-white outfits either absorbed or reflected the light from the headlamps or smartphones held by the audience in the darkness of the night.
The Génome series shows bird’s eye views of the different configurations created by the 153 dancers on the thirty-meter-high scaffolding, while Chromosome features close-up shots. The Dans la lumière series focuses on their radiant silhouettes, symbolizing the liberation of the chained prisoners from Plato’s Cave and their difficult but triumphant return to the light.
This is reinforced by the use of wood as a base, alluding to the barriers that enclose and conceal urban construction sites, the graffiti that often covers them – a truly unruly urban art – and the rebirth of life symbolized by visible veins and cracks in the wood.