International Artist JR: Breaking Boundaries

A few weeks ago, a young artist came to us with a fresh idea. Based out of Paris, the city he grew up in, he works part time out of his Brooklyn studio but his works can be found all over the globe. From Shanghai, North Korea and Sao Paulo to Israel and Palestine, JR has ‘flyposted’ his photographed portraits on the sides of buildings, water towers, on roofs of houses and trains, you name it. He exhibits freely, and suggests the people of the world who want to get involved in any of his many projects do the same.

We have cast thousands of found objects, original clay pieces, foam, plastics, direct waxes, objects found in nature, carved wood forms, the list goes on. JR is the first artist we have worked with to cast original photographs in metal. He came to us with several large format halftone prints of peoples’ eyes. He spent several hours sculpting each page through a series of bends and folds to change the orientation from a flat print to a sculptural dimensional shape. Our wax department prepared the pieces for ceramic shell casting. No mold was made as these pieces are one of a kind originals. We will pour 356 aluminum to create metal positives of the paper sculptures. Once each piece is cast complete it will be painted to mimic the color of the original paper. Our team of expert craftsmen have come up with a unique way to paint each black dot of the halftone photo onto the metal. Once the pieces are finished, the only difference between the paper original and the cast metal will be the weight, feel, and of course, permanence of the piece. From the very ephemeral state of paper posted outside, art that must brave the elements, art that may and will change over time, to the polar opposite: a permanent solution in metal; JR is continually breaking boundaries in international culture, and in art.

Installation images courtesy the Artist and Galerie Perrotin.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 20th, 2012 at 2:16 pm. It is filed under Process and tagged with aluminum, casting, flypost, flyposting, graffiti, JR, JR artist, Photography. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.