Jean-Michel Othoniel (French, b.1964) is a Contemporary artist who works in a variety of media, including drawing, sculpture, photography, and video. Born in Saint-Étienne, Othoniel graduated from the École Nationale Supérieure d’Arts in Cergy-Pontoise. He first gained attention for his sulfur sculptures exhibited at documenta in Kassel in 1992. A year later, Othoniel began incorporating glass into his works, exploring ideas of transformation and material mutation.
Throughout the 1990s and into the 2000s, Othoniel held numerous group and solo exhibitions, at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Villa Medici in Rome, and the Louvre, among others. He also participated in Art Basel 2005, showing a work entitled The Boat of Tears, which used the remains of a boat left onshore in Miami by Cuban migrants. His works are also part of the permanent collections of institutions such as The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the New York Public Library, the Musée d’Art moderne de la Ville de Paris, the Filmoteca universitaria de Barcelona, and Chanel Hong Kong.
He lives and works in Paris.
