An Artwork in Motion. L’Observatoire by JR

The Venice Simplon-Orient-Express presented L’Observatoire, an exclusive sleeper carriage with interiors conceptualised and designed by world-acclaimed artist JR. This private carriage will become a historic floating display during the first week of the Venice Biennale.

JR's passion for the rails, sparked off as a child, largely informs the inspiration behind the creation of L’Observatoire. The artist was also influenced by the design of his art studio in Paris, the charm of century-old crafts, astronomical observatories and the cabinets of curiosity of Renaissance Europe.

This private carriage will become the most spacious accommodation type onboard the train.

L’Observatoire by JR, a Venice Simplon-Orient-Express carriage, Venice, Italy, 2024. Photograph courtesy of JR.

“With L’Observatoire, people can enter my imaginary world. I envisioned the carriage primarily through shapes, with curved corners and round windows, so guests have little places to daydream. Guests can now stay in an artist’s private space while being in the most iconic train in the world – experiencing this creative crossroads for the duration of a journey is very special and hasn’t been seen in this way before”.

JR, February 2024.

Sparked off during his childhood, the interest in trains is evident in JR’s career from his seminal work ‘Women Are Heroes’ (2007) - which involved the installation of his instantly recognisable pasting of eyes on the roofs and sides of trains as they travelled through the Kibera slum in Nairobi - to ‘Mind the Gap’ (2017) which saw a giant installation of 700 miniature trains depicting faces, looping in an endless circle.

The Venice Simplon-Orient-Express is formed by 17 carriages, built in the 1920s and 1930s. At that time, the most acclaimed designers and exponents of the Art Deco movement, like René Prou and René Lalique (who created the train’s iconic ‘tulip lamp’ and the glass panelling of the Côte d’Azur restaurant car), were commissioned to decorate these historic carriages. Almost a century later, the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express chooses leading artist JR to infuse new life into one of its original carriages, Sleeping Car 3553, through a meticulous restoration of the interiors.

“I would never have dared to imagine this collaboration, because the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express is such a historic train. Working with artisans and discovering motifs that respect the era [in which the train carriages were built] was not a constraint, because I was interested in making this a timeless artwork – as if I was an artist from the 1920s. The fundamental craft is timeless”.

JR, February 2024.

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JR.

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Visit

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April 17 – 19: San Giovanni near Hotel Ciprian, Giudecca, 10, 30133 Venezia VE, Italy (from 14:00 to 17:00).
April 20 – 22: Riva dei Sette Martiri, 30100 Venezia VE, Italy (from 10:00 to 18:00).
L’Observatoire will join the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express train in 2025.

Jean René. JR

JR (Jean René) was born in France in 1983 and currently works in Paris and New York. He exhibits freely in public sites in cities around world. His work mixes Art and Act, talks about commitment, freedom, identity and limit. After finding a camera in the Paris metro in 2001, he traveled Europe to meet those who express themselves on walls and facades, and pasted their portraits in the streets, undergrounds and rooftops of Paris.

Between 2004 and 2006, he created the series “Portrait of a Generation”. In 2007, with Marco, he made Face 2 Face, the biggest illegal exhibition ever. JR posted huge portraits of Israelis and Palestinians face to face in eight Palestinian and Israeli cities.

In 2008, he embarked on a long international trip for “Women Are Heroes”, in which he underlines the dignity of women who are often the targets of conflicts. That year he also created “The Wrinkles of the City” in Cartagena, Shanghai, Los Angeles, Havana, Berlin and Istanbul. In 2010, his film “Women Are Heroes” was presented at Cannes Film Festival. The same year, JR created “Unframed”, a project in which he uses images that are not his, and reframes them in a new context, on a larger scale.

In 2011 he received the TED Prize, after which he created “Inside Out”. In a collaboration with New York City Ballet, he used the language of ballet to tell his story of the riots that happened in the French suburbs in 2005 and created “Les Bosquets”, a ballet and eponymous short film whose music was composed by Woodkid, Pharrell Williams and Hans Zimmer and which premiered at Tribeca Film Festival.

In 2014, he created an installation with 4,000 faces in and on the Pantheon in Paris. The concept of crowd will be used for a video installation at the CAC Malaga, and on the façade of Assemblée Nationale and other monuments in Paris during the COP 21 summit at the end of 2015. The same year, he worked in the abandoned hospital of Ellis Island and directed the short movie ELLIS, starring Robert DeNiro. In 2016 he was invited by the Louvre and made the famous pyramid disappear through a surprising anamorphosis. He worked in Rio de Janeiro during the 2016 Olympics and created new gigantic sculptural installations using scaffolding, at the scale of the city, putting an emphasis on the beauty of the athletic movement.

His latest projects include a museum exhibition dedicated to children at Centre Pompidou, a permanent collaboration with the Brazilian artists Os Gemeos at Palais de Tokyo in Paris, in a space used to store stolen pianos during World War II, and a film with Agnès Varda, co-directing a movie with the Nouvelle Vague icon, traveling around France to meet people and discuss their visions. This Spring, JR will unveil a giant mural at Palais de Tokyo, in connection with a new project based in Clichy-Montfermeil. JR is represented by Galerie Perrotin since 2011; he has had shows in Paris, Hong-Kong, Miami and New York. In 2013, JR got his first museum retrospectives in Tokyo (Watari-Um) and CAC in Cincinnati, followed by Frieder Burda in Baden-Baden in 2014 and HOCA Foundation in Hong-Kong in 2015.