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.
The Giants
With The Giants, the idea was to photograph athletes whose identity is blurred behind the “perfect motion” from an instantly recognisable Olympic event: diving, the high jump and the swimming section of the triathlon.
The images obtained were thus being installed in black and white on ultra-large scaffolds which themselves formed an integral part of the installation, being the only things capable of supporting such large pictures. Each installation offered a plurality of viewpoints from both up close and far away, and could be seen in the Flamengo, Barra da Tijuca and Botafogo areas in Rio de Janeiro.
Inside out
JR was also invited to do an activation inside the Rio 2016 Olympic Village.
This other project aimed to give a face to the people who are and who make the Olympic Games. Athletes, spectators, residents of the host city, visitors and volunteers stepped into a photo booth on a specially built truck designed to look like an immense mobile camera. Their photo was taken. A large-format black and white poster was instantly printed. The subjects were then invited to paste up their poster in the surrounding urban space to be part of a collaborative piece of art.
photo gallery
Artists-in-Residence: 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:
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]”.
Texts
written by Tilman Spengler in Rio
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.