Jean-Michel Othoniel hadn't slept much in the past ten days. The French artist and his team were in Tampere, Finland, mounting a major solo exhibition at the Sara Hildén Art Museum. Springtime in Finland means the sun never really goes away, and the constant glow sneaking around the edges of his hotel room curtains was disturbing his nights.
Ironically, it was this magical, round-the-clock daylight that gave its name to his show: ‘Under an Endless Light’. Othoniel says, ‘Nature is very present, especially this time of year, and bathed in light. There's a precise moment when the snow disappears and the vegetation explodes. In France, it takes three months for all the flowers to bloom, but here they come up all at once, with an explosive energy. That's what I wanted to capture.’
Named for a Finnish businesswoman/art collector, the museum was built in the 1970s, a concrete box with low ceilings and picture windows, surrounded by greenery. Hildén chose its location on the edge of an immense lake and next to an amusement park. From the sculpture garden, you can hear the shrieks of people hurtling through the air on a variety of rides.
The two parties started planning this exhibition after the museum acquired one of Othoniel's giant Murano glass necklaces at Art Basel in 2011. ‘We've been trying to have him for more than ten years,’ says chief exhibition curator Sarianne Soikkonen. But time passed, and events got in the way, including a possibility that the museum move to a more central location in town. Fortunately, this plan was shelved, because the brutalist architecture provides a perfect backdrop for the brilliant colours and reflective surfaces, the delicate poetry, of Othoniel's work.
The exhibition features close to 90 pieces from the early 2000s to today. ‘I constructed it as a narrative, where each room tells a story,’ says Othoniel. It begins with an installation, Wonder Block, conceived especially for this space. Mirrored glass bricks are stacked into 16 columns, tinted the green of the trees outside, their aspect constantly changing with the sunlight filtered through an atrium ceiling. The artist explains, ‘I wanted people to be dazzled right away, seeing the reflections in the floor from this abstract forest, in this very luminous room.’ The glass bricks were crafted in India, where he says that bricks are a sign of hope. ‘People collect them in piles, until they have enough to build a house.’
Flowers, always a major theme of Othoniel's work, appear throughout the exhibition, starting with a new series of passiflora (passion flowers) and wisteria, painted onto canvases covered with white gold leaf. In an adjoining room, abstract ink paintings of chrysanthemums (similar to paintings exhibited at the Louvre museum five years ago) are reflected in the mirrored surfaces of stainless steel ‘knot’ sculptures on the floor. Downstairs, new sculptures of passiflora in gilded cast aluminium hang on the walls, glittering brightly against the concrete.
Having created permanent fountains for the Versailles gardens and the National Museum of Qatar, Othoniel now brings water into a museum for the first time, a nod to the lake outside. A series of colourful Murano glass fountains, each one unique, sits on a foundation of amber glass bricks. Every half hour, the fountains bubble and flow for five minutes, filling the museum with joyful sounds.
Othoniel is also showing his signature necklaces, including the red-and-white one in the museum's collection, which hangs prominently in a window, framing a view of a large tree in the park. The exhibition ends with beaded glass necklaces of different lengths and colours hanging above a gleaming river of aquamarine glass bricks. Outside, two more gold necklaces hang from the branches of trees, near a gold lotus flower sculpture that turns with the wind.
Later this year and next, Othoniel will have several important exhibitions, in Brazil, China and France. But Finland is unique. For one thing, the country's official Santa Claus attended the exhibition opening. Later that night, a perfectly round rainbow filled the sky. And Tampere is the self-proclaimed sauna capital of the world, where even restaurants have their own steam baths.
Othoniel skipped the saunas, posed with Santa, and was amazed by the circular rainbow – the kind of miraculous, light-driven event that he strives to create. After turning a youthful 60 earlier in 2024, he says, ‘My work is freer and sunnier today. I'm looking for a sense of wonder, a moment of beauty suspended in time.’
Jean-Michel Othoniel 'Under an Endless Light' at Sara Hildén Art Museum, Tampere, Finland until 15 September 2024
