(MENAFN- The Peninsula) Qatar Museums (QM) will showcase some of the key series that made French street artist JR gain international renowned in a major retrospective to open on March 6 at QM Gallery in Katara.
JR is amongst a handful of world-famous artists that combines art and engaged actions through large-scale outdoor installations, films, photographs and videos, using the streetscape as his canvas and his inspiration, which he claims as the largest art gallery in the world.
JR creates 'Pervasive Art that spreads uninvited on the buildings and slums around Paris, on the walls in the Middle East, on the broken bridges in Africa or the favelas in Brazil.
He remains anonymous and doesn't explain his work, allowing the subjects, protagonists, spectators and passers -by to raise their own questions.
JR Retrospective will also feature a video lounge where selected video works can be viewed.
Among JR's best known projects is Face 2 Face in which he illegally pasted on both sides of the separation wall and in several Palestinian and Israeli cities large portraits of ordinary citizens with the same occupation of both ethnicities and religions.
In 2008, he created Women Are Heroes-a project that showcased poignant and powerful portraits of physical and emotional survival amidst atrocity, documenting the dignity of women in conflict zones and violent environments.
JR covered the streets of Rio with giant art installations representing Olympic athletes, each turning the city into their own personal playgrounds in Rio de Janeiro Olympic Games (2016) which he described as his ‘craziest' project yet.
Among other prominent works of JR are The Inside Out Project (2011), Ellis (2015 and The Louvre, Paris (2016).
Qatar Museums has done pioneering work in the Middle East to bring art out into the streets and into public spaces, notably commissioning the Tunisian artist, El Seed, to create one of the biggest art installations ever works on a huge scale for the motorway tunnels in Doha, which El Seed called Calligraffiti, and Richard Serra's breath-taking East-West/West-East, which is found in Qatar's desert, spans over a kilometre in length and consists of four steel plates which rise to 14.7 metres and 16.7 metres above the ground.
Born in France in 1983, JR is based in Paris and New York. Beginning his artistic career at the age of 17, JR joined the GaleriePerrotin in 2011. Since then, JR creates monumental photographs that he pastes around the world, infiltrating in urban life anonymous portraits, witnesses of the present and the past.
He received the prestigious TED Prize in 2011 that offered him to make a 'wish to change the world.
This exhibition at QM Gallery Katara is in collaboration with GaleriePerrotin.
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