Elias Crespin, L’Onde du Midi - a New Permanent Installation for the Louvre

Image: Elias Crispin, L’Onde du Midi © Elias Crespin. Photo Pascal Maillard.

To mark the 30th anniversary of the Pyramid, the Musée du Louvre has commissioned another major public artwork, inviting Venezuelan contemporary artist Elias Crespin to design a new permanent piece for the museum.

Elias Crispin, L’Onde du Midi © Elias Crespin. Photo Pascal Maillard.

Consisting of 128 metal tubes hanging from motor-powered cables, the artist’s kinetic creation, L’Onde du Midi, will perform its subtle choreography at the top of the Escalier du Midi in the southeast corner of the Cour Carrée. Crespin thus follows in the footsteps of leading contemporary art figures who have created works for the Louvre, such as Anselm Kiefer (2007), François Morellet (2010) and Cy Twombly (2010).

L’Onde du Midi
An example from the artist’s “Plano Flexionante” series, the sculpture is made up of parallel rows of 128 cylindrical tubes suspended in midair by invisible cables. When still, the ethereal mobile becomes a rectangular horizontal plane some 10 meters in length (W. 1.50 x L. 9.5 m). In perpetual motion, the piece seems unaffected by gravity, moving through space at a height of 3 to 4.5 meters in sequences regulated by numerical algorithms. This non-linear, undulating mechanical dance invites visitors to slow down and contemplate the enchanting work.

As though hypnotized, the spectator is drawn into the slow, graceful interplay of shapes, with its unexpected and infinite variations. The mobile’s spatial configurations are endlessly surprising: the shapes expand, become level, and diffract, substituting chaos for order, complexity for simplicity. As the stage of a mute ballet, the Escalier du Midi serves as a “rest area” for museum visitors.

Elias Crespin’s artistic universe
Combining science and art, Elias Crespin’s creations dialogue with the spectator, examining the concepts of shape, space, movement and time. Creative intuition and scientific rigor meet in his display of the laws of the universe—L’Onde du Midi—reflecting the former computer engineer’s interests.

The artist commented: “I have always been interested in shapes and logic. I am also intrigued by sensory pleasures and perception; I enjoy beautiful sunsets, for instance. On the other hand, I also appreciate more complex ideas, such as the functions and properties of circles and triangles, and drawings that can generate certain mathematical relations.”

Permanent contemporary installations at the Louvre
This project continues a long-standing tradition at the Louvre, which has since its inception been an ideal architectural setting for painted and sculpted commissions from living artists.

The inspiring building features decorative artworks by Charles Le Brun and Eugène Delacroix (Galerie d’Apollon), Georges Braque (The Birds, a ceiling painting executed in 1953 in Salle Henri II) as well as, more recently, Anselm Kiefer (Athanor, 2007, northeast staircase of the Cour Carrée), François Morellet (L’Esprit d’Escalier, 2010, Lefuel staircase) and Cy Twombly (The Ceiling, 2010, Bronzes room).

25 January, 2020 - 25 January, 2021