The Louvre’s iconic facade in Paris has been completely deformed by Vincent Leroy's spectacular kinetic installation, titled Slow Lens. So, in a period where museum interior spaces intimidate, the museum can enchant the public from the outside, by restoring the suggestive beauty of its structure and its symbolic ability to reflect and preserve the art of the capital.
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Born in Avranches in 1968, the French architect Vincent Leroy paid a tribute to the city and the state of France in one of its most iconic places. The artist has already made himself known throughout the world as the heir to French kinetic art. Slow Lens, located in front of the Musée du Louvre, is a kinetic installation consisting of a curtain of lenses that reflect and deform the facade. The design of the work is refined, it appears light and fluid, almost volatile. The effort of the movement is imperceptible. The existing architecture is fragmented by the lenses and recomposed into a sort of dynamic network. The structure generates a visual effect of repetitive distortion.
With this project Leroy wishes to offer to the observer "a displaced immersion of reality and an abstract contemplation". At night the effect is particularly striking: when it gets dark the surrounding lights spread in the lenses, by making them appear detached from the real world. The installation is framed by the music of Jérôme Echenoz, with a sound piece designed specifically to create a unique atmosphere in the room. The observer thus finds himself living a dreamlike experience in an almost surreal scenario. Through the work, the artist creates a personal imagination, where time is extremely dilated, contrary to what normally happens in the urban chaos.
Vincent Leroy places optical effects and reflective surfaces at the center of his study. His works have been exhibited in famous and suggestive places of various important cities, a short time ago he amazed Tokyo public with the spectacular "Illusion Lens" project, but in Paris, he already installed in the past three large Fresnel lenses in front of the Eiffel Tower, by creating a kaleidoscopic optical illusion of the monument.