Brooklyn Botanic Garden Presents Jean-Michel Othoniel: The Flowers Of Hypnosis

This summer, Brooklyn Botanic Garden presents Jean-Michel Othoniel: The Flowers of Hypnosis, an exhibition of six new sculptures sited in three of BBG's best-known gardens. Othoniel's new sculptures for the Garden work on a landscape scale and are born of the artist's passion for and observations of nature and flowers. This is the artist's largest exhibition in the United States since his retrospective at the Brooklyn Museum in 2012. 

 

In the Garden's iconic Japanese Hill-and-Pond Garden, three sculptures in the Gold Lotus series link the spiritual to the sensory. The lotus flower symbolizes spirituality, rebirth, enlightenment, and the sacred. The three Gold Lotus works are made of stainless steel and gold leaf.

In the intimate Fragrance Garden, a space designed to stimulate the senses of smell and touch, the artist pays homage to the rose with Gold Rose. The perfect shape of the rose has been a recurrent motif in Othoniel's work, including in paintings he created for the Louvre in 2019. A symbol of sensuality, delicacy, and infinite love, here the rose takes the form of a kinetic sculpture. A great corolla of golden pearls blooms at the top of a black steel rod.

On Lily Pool Terrace, two gigantic mirror bead sculptures, entitled Mirror Lotus, placed on the surface of lily pools, respond to each other and envelop the visitor in a play of multiple reflections. 

Says Jean-Michel Othoniel: “Gardens leave a great deal of space for the irrational, the inexplicable, the extravagant; they are places of mystery, magic, and secrecy. The large sculptures in gold and mirrors installed on the water are there to hypnotize us, to make us forget the world's harshness, and to lift us out of the disillusionment of modernity and boredom. The garden of golden flowers is in between dream and reality, offering up, while you stroll through, a moment of reenchantment. The Flowers of Hypnosis carry within them the spell of the imaginary.” 

“Jean-Michel has a passion for gardens, flowers, and the natural world that reveals itself in his works for The Flowers of Hypnosis, which respond to and enhance their garden settings. This exhibition offers unexpected sights and encounters around BBG, making a visit to the Garden even more enchanting. Brooklyn Botanic Garden is honored to share its world-renowned landscapes and gardens with an artist of international standing who shares our love for plants and gardens,” says Adrian Benepe, president of Brooklyn Botanic Garden.

 

Jean-Michel Othoniel: The Flowers of Hypnosis is free with Garden admission. For more information, visit bbg.org/othoniel.