Jérémy Griffaud, "Under the sky"

At the invitation of the Musée national Marc Chagall, artist Jérémy Griffaud (b. 1991) has created an immersive multimedia installation on the theme of biodiversity and the hybridisation of living things. Designed to echo the work of Chagall. Entitled Sous le ciel (Under the Sky), the exhibition takes the form of a new experience of painting, between materiality and symbolic language, both enhanced by the contribution of digital technology.

Inspired by the painted cycle of the Biblical Message, a masterpiece of universal and spiritual significance and the heart of the museum's permanent collection, Jérémy Griffaud created a panoramic mapping covering the entire surface of the walls. Four of Chagall's paintings in particular caught his attention, on the themes of the original Paradise and its loss (Paradise, Adam and Eve driven from Paradise), the dream (Jacob's Dream) and hospitality (Abraham and the three angels).

Conceived as a loop, the visual animation takes the viewer to the centre of a teeming, dreamlike world where passages are made between Edenic gardens and island cities, between the underworld and the celestial expanse. In this movement towards an interiority or an elsewhere, a multitude of hybrid beings swarm, their gestures and movements themselves repeated. An eternal return to oneself that, like Chagall's works, contains the different times of the world, past, present and future, lived or imagined.
 

To build up and inhabit this virtual universe with its multiple levels of reality, Jérémy Griffaud has produced almost 300 drawings, a selection of which are on show in the exhibition. The choice of watercolour allows the artist to play with the textural and fading effects of painting on paper, which are then digitised and transcribed by three-dimensional modelling. Alongside these works, preparatory sketches of Chagall's four paintings are also on display: they illustrate the creative process of the Vitebsk painter in its various technical stages, as well as its narrative and symbolic evolutions.

What Jérémy Griffaud and Marc Chagall have in common is their confidence in the effectiveness of the tools and means of painting, as well as a certain taste for play, to create sensory and poetic environments. In the singularity of their plastic language, the infinite richness of detail opens up to all sorts of discoveries and interpretations.

About the artist...
Born in 1991, Jérémy Griffaud is a graduate of Pavillon Bosio, Monaco's art school, specialising in scenography. Using watercolours that he digitises and computer-animates, the artist designs immersive video installations and virtual reality experiences that renew the relationship with the viewer.

Inspired by his many travels and stays in Asia, the artist creates colourful, hypnotic imaginary worlds that use the language of painting and digital technology to question Man's relationship with Nature. He has taken part in numerous exhibitions and festivals in France and abroad, including the Shenzen Art Museum in China, and in 2023 was awarded a residency at Villa Medici as part of the XR Farnese programme.
To find out more about the artist



To view the video report and interview with the artist, visit the museum's YouTube channel.

Exhibition produced by the Musées nationaux du XX^e Siècle des Alpes-Maritimes

   with the support of Matmut pour les arts

Curated by :
Anne Dopffer, General Curator of Heritage and Director of the Musées nationaux du XX^e siècle des Alpes-Maritimes
Grégory Couderc, Scientific Director of the Musée national Marc Chagall
Gaidig Lemarié, Head of Cultural Partnerships at the Musées nationaux du XX^e siècle des Alpes-Maritimes

Jéremy Griffaud's exhibition is part of the Parcours Villes at the 10th edition of the OVNi - Objectif Vidéo Nice festival. The artist will be presenting a virtual reality version of Sous le ciel, from 30th October to 1st November, at the Hôtel Windsor, Nice.

He will also be taking over the Grotte du Lazaret with The Garden installation, from 15 November to 31 January 2025. To find out more

Jérémy Griffaud, Sous le ciel, 2024, series of preparatory drawings, watercolours. Courtesy of the artist © Adagp, Paris, 2024.
Jérémy Griffaud in front of works by Marc Chagall, Le Paradis (1961, detail) and Adam et Eve chassés du Paradis (1961, detail), painted cycle of the Biblical Message. Nice, musée national Marc Chagall. Video capture: © Artworks production © Adagp, Paris, 2024.