Korean artist Kimsooja, invited by Galeries Lafayette to "inhabit" its historic dome, has engaged in a form of remembrance. By choosing to cover it with a film that diffracts light into rainbow spectra, she pays homage to Jacques Gruber, the great Art Nouveau glassmaker who, during the dome's construction in 1912, designed colored stained-glass windows, which were later removed and replaced with clear glass.

Following the Crystal Palace in Madrid and Metz Cathedral, the grand neo-Byzantine "luxury bazaar" is once again bathed in iridescent hues for two months. This luminous display is coupled with a physical experience offered to visitors at the heart of the dome, or, more precisely, in the space between the two domes, where they are invited to breathe in the artist's work. to the rhythm of his own breath ", so that we, in turn, may inhabit the illuminated space… It is a matter of blending " the energy of the breath " at " the sensory experience of color [at] the heart of a changing chromatic space ", in order to make visible and perceptible "two essential principles of life": air and light.

Hoping to infuse the bustling store with "creative energy," Kimsooja draws us into his simultaneously highly experimental and contemplative conception of the artwork: an adherent of the principle of "non-doing," the artist seeks to make immaterial notions perceptible, such as the passage of time, and to make " appearances that question the forces at work in art and life, inviting everyone to experience and feel the world in all its aspects ».

TO BREATHE – GALERIES LAFAYETTE, 8TH AND 5TH FLOORS
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