“The Olympic Ring between Apollo and Daphne” by OZMO in Paris, France

OZMO, on the occasion of the Planète Périphérique Festival, the project organized by the RAS association and realized with the support of RIVP and the Mairie du 20eme,  had the opportunity to create an artistic intervention that develops on the exterior walls of an entire building located in the heart of the Python-Duvernois district, in Porte de Bagnolet, in the 20th arrondissement of Paris.

The context and the formal features of the building inspired him for this project: it is impossible to think of painting on the main facade, full of balconies, windows and pillars, so he tried to find a solution that would make these elements become an integral part of the main subject: a huge, fiery red ring.

For  The Olympic Ring between Apollo and Daphne   – this is the title of the work I made –  he then recontextualized Apollo chasing Daphne and Daphne chased by Apollo, the statues that the brothers Nicolas and Guillaume Coustou created for the park of the castle of Marly and that from 1940 are in the Louvre.

The statues, designed and arranged so as to make a parallel run, are now depicted on the ends of the palace, one on each of the blind side walls, as directed in the opposite direction. They are reached and wrapped by the large red ring, shaded like a neon sign, overlooking the facade.

This element, the real protagonist of the intervention, which unfolds along the two suspenders that join the balconies, is a reference to the busy périférique, the Parisian ring road, on which the intervention faces? Is that an answer to the huge advertising signs on the building across the street? Or is that a fil rouge? Does it evoke a track, a path or an orbit? And what possible link does it have to the red ring of the Olympics cite

The Olympic Ring between Apollo and Daphne offers itself to the passerby as an element of short-circuit and harmonization: between the two mythological figures, between the walls of the building, between the idea of the center and the suburbs, and between our perception of street art, graffiti and ancient and contemporary art in the urban context.

The Intervention was presented on 13 April during the vernissage of the Planète Périphérique Festival, the extraordinary event that involved about one hundred artists who have created painted installations and interventions in the 3000 m2 of 21 apartments. The collective exhibition will be open until 7 May 2023.