JR: Giants and Inside Out (2016) - Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

For the inaugural edition of the Olympic Art Visions programme, an artist, JR; a writer, Tilman Spengler; and a digital talent, Gerald Andal were invited by the IOC to produce and present new works for the Olympic Games Rio 2016.

JR

JR owns the biggest art gallery in the world. He exhibits in the open, in streets throughout the world, catching the attention of people who are not typical museum visitors. His work mixes art and action, and talks about commitment, freedom, identity and limit.

JR creates art that sprawls uninvited onto the buildings of the slums around Paris, onto walls in the Middle East, onto broken bridges in Africa or into favelas in Brazil. His work turns elderly women into models for a day and kids into artists for a week. In this art scene, there is no stage to separate the actors from the spectators.

By remaining anonymous and refraining from explaining his immense portraits, JR leaves space for interaction between the subject/protagonist and the passer-by/interpreter.

In giving JR the opportunity to capture “humanity in motion”, the IOC is strengthening the links between culture and sport and reconnecting with the ideals of Pierre de Coubertin, the founder of the modern Games.

In Rio, JR worked on two projects: “The Giants” (provisional title) and “Inside Out Project Rio 2016”.

A gallery of all portraits was posted on the dedicated website http://www.insideoutproject.net/rio2016/en/

For more information on JR:

http://www.jr-art.net

http://www.jr-art.netwww.instagram.com/jr/

The writer Tilman Spengler

Tilman Spengler is a German writer, sinologist and literary editor. He is the author of around a dozen books, which have been translated into 21 languages. He has also won several literary awards throughout his career.

In Rio, Tilman Spengler tried to show the Games in a different light. As he himself says, “there will be thousands of competent professional sports journalists writing articles or reporting on the main topics”. So he tried to “find a perspective that wasn’t already covered by colleagues with more experience, a keener eye and better training than [him]”.

Online artist Gerald Andal

Gerald Andal is American. He works as a video editor for a real estate company and likes to make Vines on the side.

When he started making Vines, he never imagined one day he’d be using the platform to explore his creativity.

In Rio, he made Vines showing a side of the Olympic Games that most people don’t even know about. He wanted to capture the vitality of Rio de Janeiro, the energy and rhythm of the competitions and the moments between events. His hopes were to achieve a good balance between different types of environment: from the immensity of the stadium to the intimacy of the changing rooms.

https://vine.co/Gerald.Andal

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