Claude Lévêque: Sous le plus grand chapiteau du monde

Claude Lévêque‘s work intervenes in the spaces it encounters, harnessing the energy of his densely-woven, intense ‘plastic’ vocabulary to deliver a powerful visual and sensory shock. As guest artist in residence at the Louvre, Lévêque‘s engagement begins with an incandescent light installation at neon Ming Pei‘s celebrated Pyramid.

Since the mid-1990s the French artist has experimented with neon in his works, and further back, his work from 1976-1984 used light in a gentler way, with bulbs and shadow arranged into sculptural forms. His installation for the Louvre is his most drastic use of the medium yet. A huge, geometrically irregular strip – a neon lightning bolt – slices from the highest point of the pyramid to the base, scattering reflections onto the glass faces surrounding it. The viewer’s experience changes from each angle and throughout the day and night.Neon – a signature medium of choice for Lévêque – strikes a great bolt of light, slicing an immense volume of air to scatter reflections day and night on the architecture all around.

After Tony Cragg, Wim Delvoye and Loris Gréaud, Claude Lévêque’s creation in situ offers his own, highly personal reading of the museum’s iconic entrance, to be extended further into the underground moat and keep of the medieval Louvre in 2015.