With a marked taste for metamorphosis, sublimation, and transmutation, Jean-Michel Othoniel (b. 1964 in Saint-Etienne; now live and works in Paris) shows a fondness for materials with reversible properties. He started out, at the beginning of the 1990s exhibiting his works at the Kassel Documenta in 1992. A turning point in his output came the following year when he began employing glass. Working with the finest glassmakers in Murano and Basel ever since, he explores the properties of a material that subsequently became a hallmark of his work. These days Othoniel's work has an architectural dimension and the artist has permanent installations in public and private places all over the world. Othoniel wants to re-enchant the world with his sculptures; for him art is not a luxury but a necessity. Facing the disasters on the planet today, he sees this engagement of bringing, through his work, hope, joy and beauty as a real statement, a way to survive reality through art.