JR installs a huge images of athletes across Rio de Janeiro's urban landscape

Coinciding with the celebration of the upcoming Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, the artist JR has created two new works of public art in the city. The French artist has used for the two pieces included in the project "inside out", a completely new material in its realization: construction scaffolding. JR installed two giant figures of athletes as if they were large advertisements, placing them in spectacular locations across the urban landscape of Rio de Janeiro.

Otra pieza en el centro de Río. Salto de altura realizado por Mohamed YOUNES IDRISS, de 27 años, de Sudán. Vive y entrena en Colonia, Alemania. Se perdió la clasificación para los Juegos Olímpicos de Río 2016, pero de alguna manera está allí.

The first installation by JR , is near the Barra neighborhood, and represents a swimmer jumping into a nearby ocean area. Relying on a large metal scaffolding structure, the work shows an athlete flying, with outstretched arms, and jumping from the rocks, to dive into the nearby water.

The second of the pieces is installed on the roof of a large residential building, and is also formed by a large set of scaffolding bearing the image of an athlete performing a jump. JR explains on his Instagram, that the monochrome image represents the young German athlete Mohamed Younes Idriss - 27-year-old from Sudan, who lives and trains in Cologne, Germany. "He missed out on qualification for the 2016 rio olympics but he is there some how,’" says JR. While trimming the image of the body and legs of the athlete are placed on the metal structure of scaffolding, and his face reaches the front of the building, covering it across the upper three floors.

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Work in Progress. Image courtesy of the artist's Instagram

First flying piece ... Almost done installing some new artworks with a complete new technique ! Working on it since almost a year.

Work in Progress. JR's team install a new piece in Rio. Image courtesy of the artist's Instagram

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More information

Jean René. JR

JR (Jean René) was born in Paris, France, on February 22nd 1983, and currently works in Paris and New York. He exhibits freely in public sites in cities around the 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 travelled Europe to meet those who express themselves on walls and facades, and pasted their portraits in the streets, underground, and on the 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 underlined 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 the 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 the 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 has been 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.