The Fondation Cartier presents MOEBIUS-TRANSE-FORME, the first major exhibition in Paris devoted to the work of Jean Giraud, known by his pseudonyms Gir and Moebius.
An icon of incomparable stature in the world of comics, an inventor of extraordinary forms and a brilliant cartoonist, Moebius is an artist who goes beyond the traditional boundaries of the discipline. Following the artist’s wishes, this exhibition explores the theme of metamorphosis, a leitmotif that runs throughout his comics, drawings, and film projects. In relation to this theme, the exhibition also presents the first 3-D animated film directed by the artist, La Planète encore, along with the stories from the original comic boards. With landscapes and characters in perpetual transformation, his drawings explore the boundaries of the unconscious and reveal an imaginary and fantastic world. Through often sudden and disturbing metamorphoses of a character or a setting, Moebius reveals a world where appearances are not as stable as they may seem.
La Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain présente MOEBIUS-TRANSE-FORME, la première grande exposition parisienne consacrée à l’oeuvre de Jean Giraud, connu sous les pseudonymes de Gir et Moebius. Icône incomparable de la bande dessinée, inventeur de formes extraordinaires, dessinateur génial, Moebius est un artiste qui dépasse les limites traditionnelles de sa discipline. Comme il l’a souhaité, cette exposition inédite s’organise autour du thème de la métamorphose, un motif majeur et omniprésent dans ses bandes dessinées, ses projets cinématographiques ou encore son tout premier film d’animation 3D en tant que réalisateur, La Planète encore, présenté en exclusivité à la Fondation Cartier. Avec leurs paysages et leurs personnages en perpétuelle transformation, ses oeuvres explorent les confins de l’inconscient et dévoilent un monde imaginaire et fantastique. À travers la métamorphose souvent brusque et inquiétante d’une figure, d’un décor, Moebius révèle un monde où les apparences ne sont pas aussi stables qu’on pourrait le croire.
Jean Giraud, alias Moebius and Gir, is a legendary author and illustrator of comics. Born in 1938 in Nogent-sur-Marne, he attended Arts Appliqués in Paris from 1954 to 1956. He then left France to join his mother in Mexico where he stayed for eight months. Following the path of his teacher Jijé (Joseph Gillain) whose assistant he would become, Giraud immersed himself in the desert landscape. In 1960 he worked on an episode of Jerry Spring, La Route de Coronado. After working for several months on the magazine Hara-Kiri, in 1963 he and Jean-Michel Charlier — then editor-in-chief of the magazine Pilote — created the series Blueberry, which continued after the death of Charlier and to date numbers some thirty titles. During Giraud’s second trip to Mexico in 1965, he discovered traditional shaman rituals that introduced him to other world views, and which would come to influence an entire aspect of his work. Co-founder in 1975 of the magazine Métal Hurlant and the publishing house Les Humanoïdes Associés, Jean Giraud used both venues to develop his unique style under the pseudonym Moebius and published such works as Arzach (1976) and Le Garage hermétique (1979) that revolutionized the creative side of comics. Based on a screenplay by Alejandro Jodorowsky, he developed the adventures of John Difool in L’Incal (1980). The success of the series places him among the great innovators of the science fiction genre. He then took part in numerous film projects, working on several feature-length films with noted directors. In the mid-1980s, Jean Giraud moved to the United States where he began to work on a new series Le Monde d’Edena that takes place in a dream-like world. From this series, the short story La Planète encore (1990), has been adapted as a 3-D animated fi lm and is on preview at the MOEBIUS-TRANSE-FORME exhibition. After his return to France, Giraud and his wife Isabelle founded their own publishing house Moebius Productions – Stardom in 1997, which publishes notebooks, portfolios and prints, as well as most recently, volume 6 of the series Inside Moebius and L’Arpenteur, the latest album of the adventures of Arzach. Over the past ten years, Isabelle has also organized many exhibitions of the Moebius’ work throughout the world, including France, Germany, Belgium, Italy, Finland, South Korea, Japan and Brazil.
Fondation Cartier
261, boulevard Raspail 75014 Paris
