OTHONIEL COSMOS or the Ghosts of Love

June 28, 2025 - January 04, 2026

220 works, including 160 unpublished works, in 10 emblematic locations in the city of Avignon.

Le Canzoniere by Petrarch, who lived in Avignon, is dedicated to his lost love; it is a monument of universal literature, both sentimental and conceptual, imbued with a great lyrical abstraction. Jean Michel Othoniel chose it as the common thread for his exhibition, creating a poetic world dominated by infinite, concise, abstract and marvelous reasoning. The exhibition unfolds like a long sonnet, an adventure punctuated by stations and amorous pilgrimages, while leaving room for humor.

A constellation of works

The exhibition "OTHONIEL COSMOS or the ghosts of love" is designed as a constellation where each place enriches each other. The Palais des Papes is the sun, around which gravitate: the Place du Palais, the Petit Palais-Louvre museum in Avignon, the unmissable Pont d'Avignon, the Calvet Museum, the Requien Museum, the Couvent Sainte Claire, a direct homage to Petrarch (this is where he fell in love), the new Pommer baths museum and the Lambert Collection.

A poetic journey

The idea of ​​a procession is at the heart of this exhibition. The visitor is invited to navigate from one museum to another following the “navigators’ doors”, created by the artist for each place. These abstract sculptures evoke the navigators’ crosses, sky maps and the movement of the stars.

Each museum, each space, becomes a stage of a loving pilgrimage where the past is reinvented under the gaze of a visionary artist.