A knot of beads suspended at the center of the ceiling glows like a sun cutting through darkness. In the dimmed gallery, the entire expanse becomes a small universe. Gold-leafed beads and silvery glass beads trace an orbit 4 meters in diameter. Twisting and crossing yet always returning to place, the form seems to mirror a human life. The work is "Cosmos." Around it hang 12 bead knots in black, purple, teal and crimson, each representing a sign of the zodiac. Asked about his own sign, Jean-Michel Othoniel, 62, pointed to a luminous blue piece and answered, "Aquarius." The French contemporary artist is known in Korea for his 2022 solo exhibition, staged by the Seoul Museum of Art in conjunction with Deoksugung Palace, and for an installation in the garden pond at Hoam Museum of Art.
Othoniel's largest solo exhibition in Korea, "Labyrinth in Love," is running at F1963, a multipurpose cultural complex in Busan's Suyeong District. It presents some 120 works, including pieces made over the past two years and signature works from earlier in his career. The large hall is divided into five rooms, so that visitors take in the works as if exploring a labyrinth.
"Cosmos" was first shown in June last year, suspended from the ceiling of the Grand Chapel at the Papal Palace in Avignon, France. It was the centerpiece of "Othoniel Cosmos, or the Ghosts of Love," a retrospective for which the city of Avignon turned over 10 sites across the city. A work that once required a trip to France can now be seen in Busan, not even in Seoul.
The gold-leafed beads reproduce the actual positions of celestial bodies, and the colors of the zodiac signs are drawn from the gemstones associated with each. "In ancient Greek, 'cosmos' is the opposite of chaos," the artist said. "In a state where everything is peacefully arranged, I hope each person finds their own constellation."
Othoniel first drew attention in 1992 at Documenta in Kassel, Germany, where he showed sculptures made of sulfur. What made him an internationally known artist was his series of necklaces strung from glass beads. The starting point was "Scar-Necklace," made to mark the first anniversary of the death of artist Felix Gonzalez-Torres, who died of AIDS in 1997. The beads, blown by an artisan in Murano, Italy, who has worked with him since 1993, retain bubbles and blemishes. Because the scars are left unerased, they shine all the more brilliantly.
The exhibition begins not indoors but in a garden — Moonlight Garden, a former wastewater treatment site turned ecological garden that in 2024 became the first privately run garden designated by the Busan city government. Here sits "Golden Lotus," a flower of regeneration and healing.
The water of the garden carries into Seokcheon Hall, the exhibition space, as "Blue River," a floor laid with roughly 2,000 blue glass bricks. Above it hang more than 20 works from the necklace series. They are dazzling and beautiful, yet tinged with sorrow. The artist urged visitors to look closely at the surfaces of the beads hanging overhead. The whole room appears in them, upside down.
The next room is given to flowers. Lithographs of passionflowers, madder and cherry blossoms hang on the walls. Cherry blossoms are pink, but the artist has produced a new work in blue. The following room presses deeper into the flower. A fountain rises from an installation of brilliant gold bricks, shaped after a flower's stamen, surrounded by golden flower sculptures. The artist introduced the room with a line of his own: "Looking at something beautiful makes us realize how fragile our world is."
Othoniel, who places weight on discourse, has carved out his own position by confronting head-on a contemporary art world stingy with ornament. His pretty, lavish works grew out of inspiration from Murano glasswork and Indian bricks. In 2010, in India, he watched people stacking mud bricks one at a time, dreaming of a house they would someday build. Bricks, moreover, carry a universality found in every culture. The final gallery is a spring inside a "temple" built of glass bricks.
F1963, which opened in 1963 as a Kiswire wire factory, became a cultural space with its steel frame and concrete left exposed. A factory that kept its traces meets glass that holds its blemishes. Wi Mi-ra, chair of Cultural Foundation 1963, said the exhibition came together after she visited Othoniel's studio in France last year and the artist, who later traveled to Busan, agreed that F1963's value of regeneration and the urban dynamism of a light-filled Busan suited his work. "F1963 and Cultural Foundation 1963, marking their 10th anniversary this year, dream of a cultural ecosystem that enriches the lives of citizens," she said. The show is notable for bringing the artist's new works and the pieces exhibited in Avignon directly to Korea. It is also a declaration that Busan, the country's second-largest city, is no longer a cultural periphery. The Busan Biennale runs through November 1, and the Busan Museum of Art is scheduled to reopen in mid-October after renovation. The exhibition continues through December 31.
