Orbites 2019 by Miguel Chevalier

Orbites 2019 is a fourteen-meter-high light sculpture-installation suspended beneath the atrium’s glass roof. This sculpture-installation is composed of nine aluminum rings covered with LED lights. The rings, from 1.5 to 3 meters in diameter, are arranged in a cascade.

They are like a juggler’s rings stopped in mid flight. This work is a first for the artist. It was conceived specifically for Beaugrenelle and echoes the atrium’s architecture, which is composed at each level of an ellipse (architect :Valode & Pistre).

The circle—the figure of modern abstraction—also serves here as a veiled reference to those artists who, from Marcel Duchamp’s bicycle wheel to Alexander Calder’s mobiles, introduced movement into twentieth-century sculpture.

Thanks to the LEDs covering the sculpture and to a specific computer program, infinite choreographies in colored light are generated in real time. They bring these nine rings to life while continually transforming the volume of the sculpture. Surprising visual experiences are created while playing with the circularity and height of this sculpture-installation. Source by Miguel Chevalier.

• Location: Beaugrenelle, Paris, France
• Artist: Miguel Chevalier
• Curator: Jérôme Neutres
• Coordination: Büro Constance Breton
• Software: Claude Micheli
• Technical production: Voxels Productions and LedPXL
• Date: from 12 September to 7 November 2019
• Photographs: Nicolas Gaudelet, Courtesy of Miguel Chevalier