WHAT

French artist Jean-Michel Othoniel’s enchanting aesthetics revolves around the notion of emotional geometry. Through the repetition of modular elements such as bricks or his signature beads, he creates exquisite jewelry-like sculptures whose relationship to the human scale ranges from intimacy to monumentality. His predilection for materials with reversible and often reflective properties—particularly blown glass, is iconic of his practice since the early 1990s; they relate to the deeply equivocal nature of his art.

WHY 

Othoniel’s works are almost meditative. Monumental yet delicate, baroque yet minimal, poetic yet political, his contemplative forms, like oxymorons, have the power to reconcile opposites. While his dedication to site-specific commissions for public spaces has led some of his work to take an almost architectural turn, Othoniel’s holistic sensibility compares to feng shui; his works harmonise people with their environment, allowing viewers to inhabit his world through reflection and motion.