The lovely, effervescent French sculptor Laurence Jenell, popularly known as JENK, is a self-taught contemporary artist, now celebrated worldwide for her distinctive Wrapping Candy sculptures.
The artist currently lives and works on the Cote d’Azur, and in 2022, opened a workshop/gallery in Monaco to exhibit her work.
Her large twisted “bon-bon” sculptures have captured the world by storm and are now exhibited in over 50 countries –owned by governments, and now flowing into a growing number of important private and institutional collections.
JENK was honored with a Knighthood of the French Order of Arts and Letters in 2019; and become a celebrated international art celebrity.
And to think, all of this was the result of the fact that the artist was not allowed to eat sweets as a child – the impetus for her obsession.
Exhibited today in more than fifty countries and prized in hundreds of important private, public, and institutional collections and numerous galleries. JENK has even been awarded the honor of being made a Knight of the French Order of Arts and Letters in 2019.
2011
Wrapping Bonbon Bleu (#1373)
35 x 28 x 8cm | Sculpture wrapped in plexiglass
JENK began her artistic journey in the mid-1990s, when she began experimenting with differing techniques that would allow her to work successfully with plexiglass. This experimentation eventually led to her distinctive method of torsion “wrapping” – a novel technique – in which a literal rolling of the material in on itself, assisted by the twist of the foil, resulted in her ability to create her “candy sculptures.”
This breakthrough, and the resulting sculptures became JENK’s signature, and their whimsical appeal immediately took the art world by storm and made it a global phenomenon.
This breakthrough, and the resulting sculptures became JENK’s signature, and their whimsical appeal immediately took the art world by storm and made it a global phenomenon.
When one sees her work might recall other similarly, whimsical contemporary “Pop” artists –Jeff Koons and his toy balloon pups, Christo’s audaciously wrapped national monuments, Damien Hirst’s pill-popping canvases, and even harken back to early Surrealists, Duchamp, and his urinal.
But JENK, equally upbeat in her approach; she too is joyous, fun, and playful. Yet she is she is nothing but serious about her – dare I summon the adjective – word saccharine theme.
As she is also an artist who is exquisitely aware of the gift she holds; the destiny that allowed her to come to this Garden of Eden and create her “treats” under the rose-gold light that blankets the Vallois countryside and bewitched artists from Picasso, Braque, to the Fauves,
However, “Pop” – or contemporary JENK’s work might appear to the superficial or modern viewer, the artist, and her work, are steeped in the Vallauris countryside in the South of France; a region steeped in the history of art- and artists from Picasso, Braque and Van Gogh, to the Fauves in l’Estaque, to the New Realists – who sought to embrace and tame the region’s syrupy, subtle colors; and perhaps most comparably to the age-old potters of the countryside, to dig their variant-colored clays of its unique earth, to toss, glaze and carry it off from thes shore of Golf Juan to the wider world.
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