OISEAUX EXOTIQUES
Oiseaux Exotiques was commissioned for Omar Barquet in 2016 by Related Group for the parking lot of the Paraiso Bay Views condominium complex in Miami, USA. The work for the mural began in 2018 and was concluded in June 2019, after more than 15 months of production. It is currently the largest mural in south Florida at 7,655 m2.
The work pictorially explores the formal elements of the landscape, flora and fauna of the state of Florida, tied to musical notation. The silhouettes transform into strokes that follow an invisible rhythm, invoking the lines created by birds in flight and the trails left by their feathers in the wind, giving the impression of seeing a varied flock midflight. These elements intermix with floral and geometric motifs, flashes of color and line that call forth typical landscapes of Miami, where an art deco aesthetic has been adopted and embraced decades ago.
The title of the project comes from one of the most renowned pieces by the French musician Olivier Messiaen, who was a key composer in the XX century, as well as an avid ornithologist. Oiseaux Exotiques or Exotic Birds was written for piano and xylophone, glockenspiel, percussions, and wood and metal wind orchestra, using as direct inspiration the songs of over 45 species of birds, mainly from North and South America. The piece gathers sounds that would never be heard simultaneously in nature, creating a symphony that pays tribute to the diversity of bird chants.
The mural Oiseaux Exotiques proposes a fusion of landscape music- nature that recalls the sounds and colors representative of Florida. The original score for piano by Messiaen served as a guide to map out the lines of the pictorial body. The mural narrates throughout its walls the merging of a storm’s wind with an enormous egret, from which innumerable feathers detach mid-flight; the glissandos and other elements of the score are extracted like traces that mark a visual rhythm described in the birds’ song and flight, closing with a scene of the flock during a sunset in paradise.
The murals of Building One.
The murals of Building Two.
Work in Progress: painting gradients, image projection, and tracing.
The Design Phase: bird inspiration, sketching, renders, mockups, and meetings.
