“The truth is my work is about interaction between people,” JR told APTN at the time, as quoted by CBS Los Angeles’ Katie Johnston. Pei’s 71-foot-tall glass pyramid, making it look as if the structure had vanished into thin air. According to Nina Azzarello of Designboom, the artist attached an image of the palatial museum building to I.M. In 2016, JR created a similarly uncanny illusion at another Paris landmark: the Louvre. Today, the artist combines the two mediums by installing large-scale, black-and-white photographs in public areas.

(Speaking with the Guardian’s Elizabeth Day in 2010, JR explained that the moniker refers to his initials but declined to reveal his full name.) After discovering a camera on the Paris Metro, the young JR developed an interest in photography, too. Since its opening, the eye-catching work has provided the perfect backdrop for onlookers eager to photograph themselves pretending to jump across the canyon, scale the rocks or fall into the ravine, writes Sarah Cascone for Artnet News.Ī post shared by JR in France in 1983, the artist known as JR began honing his craft as a teenager, when he painted graffiti on the streets of Paris. The cleverly deceptive illusion uses a black-and-white photographic collage to create the appearance of a large ravine. “I like that it combines with the Eiffel Tower, so it’s a piece of art because of the Eiffel Tower already behind it.” “t’s really cool because it’s really realistic,” visitor Lara Watson told Reuters last month. Its installation arrived ahead of the June 4 opening of a mid-career retrospective, “ JR Chronicles,” at the Saatchi Gallery in London.

The public art exhibition, which debuted on May 19, will remain in place for a month. An innovative, newly unveiled street artwork by French photographer JR makes Paris’ iconic Eiffel Tower look like it’s hovering over a giant canyon.Īs French newspaper Le Monde reports, JR created the trompe-l'oeil illusion at the Trocadéro, an assortment of museums, sculptures, gardens and fountains across from the Parisian landmark.

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