Kyoto Meetings

In the Garden of Love Jean-Michel Othoniel / Perrotin Tokyo

Jean-Michel Othoniel, the Paris-based French artist, presents, for the first time at Art Collaboration Kyoto, a site-specific installation titled In the Garden of Love. This immersive environment at the Perrotin Tokyo booth brings a new series of sculptures around a sea of pink glass bricks. It unfolds as a luminous imaginary landscape, where the shimmery beauty of glass fountains interacts with representations of golden Sakura flowers.

“In my dream, the sea is pink, the Sakura are gold, and water is a concert of musical sparkle.”
Jean-Michel Othoniel

Othoniel’s practice combines hand-blown glass elements—bricks and beads—with a deep sensitivity to material and sensory experience. In this context, water becomes an essential component: flowing, reflecting, and producing a gentle acoustic presence that activates the space and invites contemplation.
Othoniel has a long relationship with Japan, which he first discovered in 1992 during his first exhibition at the Hara Museum, invited by the Cartier Foundation. In 1999 and 2000, he participated in Passage: New French Art, a touring exhibition shown in Tokyo, Hokkaidô, Hiroshima and Nagoya. In September 2009, he installed a red heart, Kokoro, commissioned by the Hara Museum ARC in Gunma. In 2012, the Hara Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo hosted his major retrospective exhibition My Way, originating from the Centre Pompidou in Paris.

The work itself also creates a bridge between Japan and France. It was in 1999, on the island of Hokkaido during a residency program, that Othoniel expanded his exploration of glassmaking techniques, discovering a traditional Japanese method for incorporating gold leaf into glass—a process he later refined in Venice through collaborations with master glassmakers. The integration of gold leaf imparts a luminous, precious quality to the works.

At ACK, the installation In the Garden of Love offers a meditative experience: an intimate encounter with light, water, and material transformation.

Beyond temporary group exhibitions and presence in several major Japanese collections, Othoniel has realized multiple permanent public sculptures in Japan. Kin no Kokoro, commissioned in 2013 for the 10th anniversary of the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo, was installed in Mohri Garden. In the same year, he unveiled Kokoro no Mon in Nagano, located in the gardens of the Karuizawa New Art Museum, in dialogue with Kengo Kuma’s Birch Moss Chapel. In 2016, he created L’In Noir commissioned by Mitsubishi Bank. For the opening of the Hirosaki Museum of Contemporary Art in 2020, Othoniel created The Knot of Eden installed permanently in the entrance of the new museum. In 2024, the sculpture Noeud de Babel was placed on permanent display at the entrance to the Four Seasons Hotel in Osaka.