Jean-Michel Othoniel

(French, born 1964)

Jean-Michel Othoniel is a contemporary French artist who works in a variety of media. Employing materials such as glass, wax, and sulphur, Othoniel explores ideas of material transformation. “I want to seduce you with their beauty then lead you to other themes,” he has explained of his work. Born on January 27, 1964 in Saint-Étienne, France, he studied at the École Nationale Supérieure d’Arts in Cergy-Pontoise. He first gained attention for his sulfur sculptures exhibited at documenta 9 in Kassel in 1992. Throughout the 1990s and into the 2000s, Othoniel was included in numerous group and solo exhibitions with the theme of reconciling opposites. This is evinced in his work The Boat of Tears (2005), which attempts to bridge the poetic and political, as a tribute to Cuban exiles and a formal exercise in glass sculpture. The artist currently lives and works in Paris, France. Today, his works are held in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, and Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, among others.