Retrospective of the artist JR in New York, 20 years to meet the invisible

“It’s quite special to suddenly see all your work when you’re just 36“, JR confides to AFP, a few hours before the opening of the exhibition,”but at the same time, realize that it’s been 20 years already.”

Everything is not there, far from it. The essence of the work of the co-director of the film “Faces, Villages“with Agnès Varda is also in the street, where she has most often already disappeared.

But through a selection of his works, spanning two decades, “JR: Chronicles“, visible until May 3, offers perspective on an artist who is part of the ephemeral, in the moment.

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King of the happening, of the buzz, perfectly in his time, that of the Instagram generation, JR is not just that.

“We wanted to present JR as a societal artist, which maybe not the way a lot of people see him, in the US anyway.“says Drew Sawyer, co-curator of the exhibition, with Sharon Matt Atkins.

From the first photos, pasted on the walls of Paris, to his last work, a giant fresco representing more than 1,000 New Yorkers, “all projects link to each other“, explains the thirty-something in the hat and dark glasses.

The guiding principle, “what I hold most dear in my work in the street“, he said, it is”to meet people“.

From the start, when he was going to photograph the young people of Clichy-sous-Bois, JR has been in contact, to then step aside behind his subjects.

With “Women are Heroes“, “The Wrinkles of the City” or “Inside Out“, or “Faces, Villages“, it offers representation to the invisible.

– “Keep track” –

“From the start, working in the ephemeral, outside, I have always taken into account the documentation to keep track“, explains JR.

“And these traces“, he said,”over time, have become, at times, more interesting than the exterior projects themselves since they show the way in which people reacted to the installations.”

“It gives a temperature of the place, almost a sociological study of the different contexts in which I was able to install these works.”

The Brooklyn Museum exhibition, which has similarities to that of the European House of Photography, which closed in February, is a counterpoint to what the general public knows about JR’s work.

Videos, montages, animations … the French even pushes the work of pedagogy to the point of offering, via a smartphone application, a series of videos in which he explains his projects.

“What we see in the museum, we cannot see it in works that I have been able to carry out“, argues the one who recently stunned the United States with his giant photo of a child looking over the wall of the Mexican border.

This exhibition, JR wanted it free, while refusing that it be sponsored by one or more companies, dominant practice today. The budget was closed with contributions from individual donors.

“I have lived in New York for nine years and to be able to present my work for the first time like this is an incredible opportunity.”

At the center of the exhibition, there is “Chronicles of New York,“the giant mural with the hundreds of New Yorkers he photographed and interviewed separately.

They are brought together in a giant montage, which recalls, like “Chronicles of Clichy-Montfermeil“(2017), paintings by Véronèse or Le Tintoretto, as well as the Mexican painter Diego Rivera, an influence claimed. The photo will soon be displayed all over the American megalopolis.

From Rio to the Louvre, JR thinks big, which requires preparation. Gone are the days of graffiti ripped off, but “the way i work hasn’t really changed“, he assures.

He’s already gone on other projects, including one in an American prison, which came to fruition just a few days ago.

“This ease, thanks to the printing, to my way of working and also to my speed, by staying in small teams“, he explains,”allows me to continue working like when I was 16 and suddenly decide to go stick in one street or another.”