French Artist to Cover the Louvre Pyramid in Giant Exhibition

French artist JR will cover I.M. Pei's 70-foot-high glass monument with an exhibition of giant black-and-white photos of the 16th-century buildings, which will make the pyramid seem to disappear.

JR has chosen the biggest gallery in the world to showcase his art: public spaces. For some ten years now, the artist's monumental photographic collages have been popping up on the walls of cities in all four corners of the globe. "The most important thing," he explains, "is where I put my photos and the meaning they take on depending on the place".

Whether it be the Middle East, the favelas of Rio, slums of Kenya, New York, Le Havre or Shanghai, JR's works leave no one indifferent, because they return our gaze and cut to the very heart of our innermost selves. His spectacular mode of intervention poses questions about artistic creation, the role of images in the age of globalization, and their widespread use, from intimate circles to mass distribution. Invited by the "biggest museum in the world"-which also generates the most selfies-JR has set his sights on one of the Louvre's symbols, the Pyramid, which he intends to transform with a surprising anamorphic image.

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