Public collection | Musée du Louvre, Paris
Opening on January 24th, 2020
To mark the 30th anniversary of the Pyramid, the Musée du Louvre has commissioned another major public artwork, inviting Elias Crespin to design a new permanent piece for the museum. Consisting of 128 metal tubes hanging from motor-powered cables, the artist’s kinetic creation, ‘L’Onde du Midi’, will perform its subtle choreography at the top of the Escalier du Midi in the southeast corner of the Cour Carrée. Crespin thus follows in the footsteps of leading contemporary art figures who have created works for the Louvre, such as Anselm Kiefer (2007), François Morellet (2010) and Cy Twombly (2010).
‘L’Onde du Midi’ is an example from the artist’s ‘Plano Flexionante’ series, the sculpture is made up of parallel rows of 128 cylindrical tubes suspended in midair by invisible cables. When still, the ethereal mobile becomes a rectangular horizontal plane some 10 meters in length (W. 1.50 x L. 9.5 m). In perpetual motion, the piece seems unaffected by gravity, moving through space at a height of 3 to 4.5 meters in sequences regulated by numerical algorithms. This non-linear, undulating mechanical dance invites visitors to slow down and contemplate the enchanting work.
As though hypnotized, the spectator is drawn into the slow, graceful interplay of shapes, with its unexpected and infinite variations. The mobile’s spatial configurations are endlessly surprising: the shapes expand, become level, and diffract, substituting chaos for order, complexity for simplicity. As the stage of a mute ballet, the Escalier du Midi serves as a ‘rest area’ for museum visitors.
Musée du Louvre – Escalier du Midi I Rue de Rivoli, 75001 Paris
