JR
“Tehachapi”
New York, 540 West 25th Street
JR’s practice is rooted in his deep commitment to collaborating with individuals and communities alike. His work is characterised by large-scale photographic interventions in urban environments that address cultural and political issues, often with an emphasis on social justice. Each portrait holds a multitude of stories as JR expertly balances the macroscopic with the microscopic, the individual experience with the universal. An extensive online catalogue of accompanying videos, images and texts will be found via the exhibition pages on the Pace website to coincide with the exhibition opening.
Bringing together artworks from several significant bodies of work, JR: Eye to the World explores JR’s unique view of humanity as he transcends borders, politics, and cultural identity through the camera lens. This exhibition coincides with the artist’s largest solo museum show to date, JR: Chronicles, opening this June at Saatchi Gallery, London. Saatchi Gallery will feature JR’s most iconic works from the last fifteen years, expanding from the recent showcase in Brooklyn Museum, New York.
JR, Tehachapi, Daytime, Triptych, U.S.A., 2019 © JR
JR’s ongoing global project, The Wrinkles of the City, shines a spotlight on the overlooked, be it a crumbling building or an elderly person. His interest is in the marks left behind by lived experience. In The Wrinkles of the City, Istanbul, Ali Kamil & Sukran Kadakal, Pasted palimpsest, Turkey (2015), JR captures an intimate portrait of an elderly fisherman and his wife embracing with their eyes closed, aged hands reaching for one another: a testament to the city’s history and the citizens who built it. The title of this piece reveals that the portrait is in fact a palimpsest, a ghostly imprint, beneath which an unknown, hidden image exists, inviting viewer’s imagination and hinting at the secrets of a city. In other works, such as The Wrinkles of the City, Action in Shanghai, Wu Zheng Zhu, Chine (2010) and The Wrinkles of the City, La Havana, Mercedes Décalo Rodríguez, (artwork by JR, project by JR & José Parlá) Cuba (2012), JR pasted the portraits onto dilapidated walls in Shanghai and Havana, actively connecting the citizens with their surroundings, a comment on the enduring strength of both people and architecture in the face of rapid change. Presented in dialogue with one another, the portraits that make up The Wrinkles of the City, despite disparate countries and stories, pay tribute to the communities that shape their cities.
