Jean-Luc Moulène

Born in Reims in 1955, Jean-Luc Moulène lives and works in Normandy.

For more than forty years, he has been developing a complex body of work that is both analytical and mysterious, with photography long being the most visible and recognized part of it.

A demanding and sometimes controversial artist, Jean-Luc Moulène has patiently built up a body of work which, beyond its diversity, expresses a constant reflection on the condition of the artist in society, a radical critique of the manipulations and seductions of representation, and a formal exploration that is often not without humor and derision.

From the late 1990s onwards, after joining the Chantal Crousel Gallery, he exhibited in Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America. His first major solo exhibition in the United States, organized by the renowned Dia:Beacon, took place in 2011, and in 2016, the Centre Pompidou devoted a major exhibition to his sculptures.

In 2015-2016, he designed the wearable sculpture OS for the MiniMasterpiece gallery. This ring is a deformation of the artist's left thumb bone. The internal bone, or endoskeleton, thus becomes an exoskeleton into which the collector is invited to slip their own finger. The artist's bone becomes our shell. This ring is part of the artist's broader reflection on the body producing objects or the body amalgamating with objects.

In 2018, Moulène designed a second project for the gallery, NousDeux, which will be made possible from 2023 onwards using a new material, silver clay. This wearable sculpture project follows a unique protocol. Shaped by two people, this piece of jewelry is the direct result of pressure exerted on solid silver clay by two palms coming together. The pressed clay will imprint the shape and fingerprints of the two palms to create a unique piece of jewelry, which will then be validated by the artist.