The Grand Paris Express by Dominique Perrault and JR

Dominique Perrault (1953), architect from the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris (1978) and Higher Diploma in Towm Planning (1979) from the same university, based its office in 1981 in Paris, and currently has two international offices in Geneva and Madrid. He has been professor in several Architectural Schools, as the one of Rennes, New Orleans, Chicago, Barcelona, Brussels or Zurich and his work has been exhibited in museums all around the world..

Figure of French architecture, Dominique Perrault gained international recognition after having won the competition for the National French library in 1989 at the age of 36. This project marked the starting point of many other public and private commissions abroad, such as The Velodrome and Olympic swimming pool of Berlin (1992), the extension of the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg in (1996), the Olympic tennis centre in Madrid (2002), the campus of Ewha’s University in Seoul (2004) and the Fukoku Tower in Osaka, Japan (2010).

He is member of the Grand Paris scientific council, was appointed curator of the French Pavilion in the 12th Architecture Biennale in Venice (2010), being the subject of the installation METROPOLIS ?.

Among the prizes he has been awarded with, the AFEX Award for the Ewha Womans University in Korea and the “Grande Médaille d’or d’Architecture” from the Académie d’Architecture in 2010, the Mies van der Rohe prize (1997), the French national Grand Prize for Architecture (1993) and the Equerre d’argent prize for the Hotel Industriel Berlier (1989).

The body of his work was assembled in a monographic exhibition: “Dominique Perrault Architecture” exhibited at the Centre Georges Pompidou in 2008 and later made and itinerant show that travelled to Madrid (ICO Foundation, 2009) and Tokyo (Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery, 2010). In 2015 he was awarded with the Praemium Imperiale prize, by the imperial family of Japan and Japan Art Association.

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.