Les Falaises du Trocadéro

HENI Leviathan is delighted to release a set of four prints by JR, titled Les Falaises du Trocadéro, published by HENI Editions. The images show JR’s extraordinary installation at the Eiffel Tower in Paris, France. The set reflects a variety of lights and scenes taken at the exact point of anamorphosis on the first days of the installation in May 2021. 

The monumental and participative aspects of JR’s works invite the audience to immerse itself in the art, leading to a new approach that is more accessible and interactive.

Through this work JR redefines the codes of the urban landscape and invites spectators to apprehend their environment differently. The artwork renews itself according to the various lights of day, with each moment offering a new perspective on Paris’ most famous monument, the Eiffel Tower. The latter remains the central element of the composition, but the illusion of an underground city is a new myth, adding to the long list of its rich history. JR continues to reveal the monuments of Paris in a new light by sublimating them and inviting spectators to take a fresh look at their everyday environment.

JR’s tradition of including people in his work goes back a long way: either directly by pasting their portraits across the world in large format, as in The Wrinkles of the City, Women are Heroes or even the Inside Out Project, which invites anyone to get their large scale portrait taken free of charge in order to make a statement; or indirectly by letting people be part of the art piece by ripping it off, playing with it, imagining stories or asking someone else to take their picture. 

The performative nature of JR’s works is inherent to his practice. When he was first invited to take over the Louvre in 2016 he decided to play with the public’s habit of taking selfies.. To do so, he made the pyramid disappear through an anamorphosis that revealed the building behind. Throughout the duration of the installation, as everyone was taking pictures, asking people around to immortalize the moment, they ended up interacting with the artwork. Three years later in 2019, JR created a collaborative artwork for the 30th anniversary of the Louvre pyramid. This time, he united 400 volunteers to paste a massive collage that made the pyramid disclose its secret underneath. He used the same anamorphosis technique, requiring the audience to be at a precise point for the trompe l’oeil to work. A similar method can be seen on these images of Les Falaises du Trocadéro, resulting in spectators trying to find the perfect location and interacting with the artwork, hoping not to fall into the imagined precipice. 

Next to their visual impact, at the core of these projects is the gathering of people, volunteers, visitors, souvenir catchers, as well as the reactions induced by the art piece, all of which became part of the work. In addition to the paper medium used, the accessible and participative nature of JR’s work makes it ephemeral. Once pasted, it lives its own life.