Photos of Children by JR Will Inaugurate Perrotin’s New London Gallery

How delightful to run around and play as an innocent child “when you don’t realize the world has borders.”

So says French artist JR, whose portraits of refugee children will go on display from Friday to April 19 as the inaugural exhibition at the new London branch of Perrotin, located on Brook’s Mews in Mayfair.

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The works are part of a series focusing on “a moment in life where — no matter the context of where they live — they still have that lightness in their heart. They don’t realize the heaviness of the world around them, and that’s what I’ve tried to capture.”

A front-row regular at Louis Vuitton and Saint Laurent shows, JR is easy to spot in his black porkpie hat and black Wayfarer-style sunglasses, holdovers from his formative years as a graffiti artist seeking to evade recognition from authorities.

He also tends to wear fairly anonymous black clothes and plain white sneakers, though his hats are made by Hermès and his eyewear custom-made to his specifications by Amaury Paris.

In his recent book “JR-isms” by Princeton University Press, he explained that anonymity is key to his practice of photography, wild postings and community-based public art.

“I want the focus to be on my work and on the people who participate in the projects, not on myself,” he said. “I don’t want the projects to be read differently if my name is Muhammed, Eli or Peter.”

For the Perrotin show, titled “Outposts,” JR included drone images of 120-foot-long banners of a child playing being carried by people around refugee camps in Colombia, Italy and the Mexico-U.S. border.

JR titled this series “Déplacé-e-s,” the French term for displaced people, to raise questions about migrating and moving countries, whether as a refugee or not.

Displaying them in London adds another layer of poignancy as “it’s a cosmopolitan city where many people come from somewhere else.”

Perrotin founder Emmanuel Perrotin said “it’s important to have a gallery in the British capital. We have a longstanding relationship with the U.K. art scene and collectors. I’ve been waiting for the opportunity to set up the gallery under the right conditions.”

JR said his exhibition of carefree images of children at play is a temporary monument to their dreams and aspirations.

A second series of photographs, the negatives transferred to wood and then painted, renders children as mysterious, glowing silhouettes reminiscent of classical depictions of divinity.

“You can almost see the light within them,” he said. “They almost look like Greek statues.”

The peripatetic JR joined a Zoom call from New York City, where he photographed French ballerina and actress Marion Barbeau wrapping herself in one of his giant photos like a blanket. (He coaxes other celebrities to interact with his giant photos every year as the official photographer at Madonna’s Oscar after party.)

After the Perrotin opening, the artist will set off again readying other exhibitions in Kyoto, Japan; Portugal; Naples, Italy, and Montpellier, France.

But JR’s big moment of the year is set to coincide with Paris Fashion Week in September: He’s planning an immersive takeover of Pont Neuf, doubling its height as an homage to how Cristo and Jean-Claude wrapped the landmark bridge 40 years ago.

Initial sketches suggest a bridge assembled with enormous, jutting boulders.

“It’s very ambitious. Some days I’m like, ‘It’s gonna happen’ and then sometimes I’m like, ‘Oh my God, how are we gonna make this happen?'” he said. “I guess the only way to know if it works is to try it.”

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