836M DEDICATION CEREMONY FOR JEAN-MICHEL OTHONIEL’S LA ROSE DES VENTS SCULPTURE IN GOLDEN GATE PARK

September 15 2022

The dedication ceremony for La Rose des Vents occurred on September 15, 2022. La Rose des Vents is a monumental work of public art located in front of the Conservatory of Flowers in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. Created by renowned French artist Jean-Michel Othoniel, the gilded, kinetic sculpture now belongs to the city’s Civic Art Collection as a gift from 836M. 836M is grateful to the San Francisco Arts Commission and the Department of Recreation and Parks for their support of the donation.

The dedication ceremony, free and open to all, began with representatives from several divisions of city government in attendance including Recreation and Parks, Public Works, the Arts Commission, and the Cultural Districts Program. Othoniel, the Consul General of France in San Francisco, presided at the event.

In the first hour, attendees were treated to a performance designed by choreographer Dimitri Chamblas. Titled Slow Show, the site-specific performance features an ensemble of 15 local performers and music by artist and deejay Eddie Ruscha, responding to the immediate context of the location through a series of intense, concentrated and trance-like operations. Slow Show premiered in 2017 at various sites around Los Angeles followed by public square performances in Arles and Paris, France; an outdoor amphitheater in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso; and a frozen lake in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Following celebratory remarks, the program closed with an incredible concert by French nu-pop and disco band L’Impératrice.

“One of our goals has been to merge our love of French culture with our life in San Francisco,” said 836M Founders Julie and Sébastien Lépinard. “We feel strongly about bringing art in the public space into partnership with the city, and it is a special honor to have placed a work by an artist as distinguished as Jean-Michel Othoniel into public view for generations to come.” Among his many credits Othoniel is the artist to have a permanent installation on the grounds of Versailles in over 300 years

“For more than 150 years, Golden Gate Park has been a place to find inspiration in both art and nature. We rejoice at the news of La Rose’s acceptance as a permanent part of our park,” said San Francisco Recreation and Park General Manager Phil Ginsburg.

“La Rose des Vents pays tribute to the compass rose, a device used to display the orientation of the cardinal directions,” said Frédéric Jung, Consul General of France in San Francisco. “Just so, Jean-Michel Othoniel’s evocative work of art is a symbol of the cardinal link between France and the United States, directing art and ideas between our two countries.”

ABOUT JEAN-MICHEL OTHONIEL

Jean-Michel Othoniel lives and works in Paris, and holds the distinction of being the first artist to have a permanent installation on the grounds of Versailles in over 300 years. He began working with glass in the early 1990s after being introduced to some of the finest glassmakers in Murano, Italy. From 1996, he began creating artworks for specific places – hanging giant necklaces in the gardens around the Villa Medici in Rome and from trees in the gardens of the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice. In 2000, he received an invitation to transform a Paris subway station into a double crown of glass and aluminum for his work, Le Kiosque des Noctambules. In later works for the “Crystal Palace” exhibition at the Fondation Cartier in Paris and MoCA in Miami, Othoniel made blown-glass enigmatic sculptures that resembled jewelry, architecture, and gigantic erotic objects. By 2004, he exhibited his freestanding glass necklaces at the Louvre Museum. In 2011, the Centre Pompidou in Paris mounted a retrospective of Othoniel’s work, which subsequently traveled to the Leeum Samsung Museum of Art/Plateau in Seoul, the Hara Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo, the Macao Museum of Art in China and the Brooklyn Museum in New York. Jean-Michel Othoniel is represented by Galerie Perrotin in Paris.

Sculpture La Rose des Vents by Jean-Michel Othoniel Finally Takes Up Permanent Residence in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park

March 1 2022

Nine months after it was initially scheduled to be permanently installed to coincide with Golden Gate Park’s 150th-anniversary celebrations in April 2020, the glistening gold sculpture returned to its place in front of the Conservatory of Flowers.

It was first installed in September 2015 by 836M in partnership with the San Francisco Recreation and Park Department and the San Francisco Arts Commission. In February of 2020, it was removed to prepare its exterior cladding and construct a new base for its forever home.

The kinetic gold and aluminum sculpture by renowned French artist Jean-Michel Othoniel resumed its prominent place in the Park and the Conservatory’s flowerbeds in March of 2021.

The re-gilding was completed by Nancy Thorn, owner of Gold Leaf Studio in Portland, who worked on the project at Atthowe Fine Art Services in Oakland. 

2020 PERMANENT RESIDENCE PRESS RELEASE