Parisians might remember when last autumn, in September 2023, the scaffolding assembled to renovate the Opéra National de Paris, Palais Garnier, was covered by the black and white image of a luminous, rocky cave. This was Act I of artist JR’s installation, Retour à la Caverne. This scrim depicted not only a cave, but it also traced sections of the century-old building and the modern scaffolding which it was covering up. Such was the constellation of images, then: cave, Neo-Baroque architecture, and modern scaffolding.
Projected onto the ‘walls’ of the cave during Act I, for four nights, were excerpts from various films, which welcomed Parisians to crowd this construction site.* It had seemed, at the time, that this installation was self-contained, but, in fact, it merely preceded a second act, in which this montage of images on the scrim was replaced entirely by a cave—all that remains in Act II is a cave marked with human handprints.
But these installations merely paved the way for an event even more grand, namely, JR’s ballet-project with choreographer Damien Jalet and musician Thomas Bangalter, entitled CHIROPTERA—Act III, as it were. On November 12th, 2023, twenty-five thousand spectators gathered in the Place de l’Opéra to watch as the installation of Act II became the backdrop for a dance performance with over 150 dancers (Link to Retour à la Caverne – Acte II, CHIROPTERA, 12 novembre 2023: https://vimeo.com/885335656).
Such is the context for the exhibition currently on display at the Perrotin gallery in Le Marais, which, primarily through the medium of photography layered with black ink and charcoal, reawakens this past autumn’s spectacle for Paris once more.
JR works at the intersection of photography, public art, and social engagement. Over the last two decades, he has spearheaded impressive public, site-specific ‘interventions’ in cities across the globe, ultimately in an effort to involve the public in the act of artistic creation. He is also a filmmaker, having directed four documentaries, including the Academy Award-nominated Faces and Places (2017), co-directed by Agnès Varda. His exhibition currently on display, accompanied by Thomas Bangalter’s sound installation, is his fourth with Perrotin Paris and his thirteenth with Perrotin.
On the first floor of Perrotin, visitors encounter his series Dans la lumière, which blends three formal techniques: photo transfers on wood are reinforced with black ink and highlighted with hand-drawn charcoal strokes. This series, according to Perrotin, “symboli[ses] the liberation of the chained prisoners from Plato’s Cave and their difficult but triumphant return to the light.” And yet, the motif of darkness stands out just as forcefully as does the light. Curiously, JR’s attempt to symbolise a triumphant escape from darkness—a break from illusion, a return to truth, to light—is unable to escape it fully.
In fact, JR’s celebration of light, at least formally, depends on his use of darkness. The light in these works is only visible against the backdrop of darkness. These seemingly separate motifs (of darkness and light), then, are not as different as they might at first appear to be, which JR perhaps somewhat acknowledges himself, at least indirectly: at the end of CHIROPTERA the message “Darkness holds the grace of the light” illuminated Place de l’Opéra. Light is to be found within the darkness, is what JR herewith suggests. Or, less vaguely in a way that relates to moral principles: “there is good in this world (and we should seek it),” he wishes to say, perhaps. The ominous, latent message being, of course, that darkness must always remain for us to be able to see the light.
This reading of JR’s project is perhaps more proximate to Plato’s allegory of the cave, which inspired it to begin with, than an interpretation which indiscriminately understands the “triumphant return to the light” to be absolute, or even something to be achieved in the first place. For Plato’s Socrates, ‘cavic existence’ is representative of the reality of the physical world at large, a mere fragment of what reality is in truth. Inspite of this, however, one should nevertheless strive for a higher knowledge, namely, to behold the Good. Ultimately, one can never truly escape the cave, as Socrates reminds us, for even those who have ascended must return to live again with the prisoners.
There is much else to see on the first floor: L’Ombre de la caverne recreates the choreographic exchange between principal dancer of the Paris Opera Amandine Albisson and her stalking shadow; Génome pictures the silhouettes of the 153 dancers on the scaffolding; Chromosome spotlights close-up stills of their individual movements. Each series repeats the exploration of darkness and light, which viewers first encounter in Dans la lumière. On the second floor of the exhibition and in Saint-Claude, one finds the photographic documentation of Retour à la Caverne along with a “making of” behind the scenes documentary film. In the Saint-Claude building is a sound installation by Thomas Bangalter entitled Aletheia 19.
The vernissage of Dans la lumière was accompanied by an incredible dance performance on scaffolding, an excerpt from CHIROPTERA. Damien Jalet’s choreography stunned the audience into a silence which intensified the breathy and somewhat frightening sound design of Bangalter. In all its strangeness, this was the most engaging dance performance I have seen in a long time.
Dans la lumière is on view at the Perrotin in Paris through July 27th.
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* Films shown: Les Bosquets by JR, L’oiseau de Feu by Maurice Béjart, Boléro by Maurice Béjart, Les Contes d’Hoffmann by Jacques Offenbach, directed by Robert Carsen, Brise-lames by Damien Jalet, Le Parc by Angelin Preljocaj, Die Grosse Fuge by Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker, La Traviata by Giuseppe Verdi, directed by Simon Stone, The Art Of Not Looking Back by Hofesh Shechter and Les Indes Galantes by Jean-Philippe Rameau, directed by Clément Cogitore.
