Bernar Venet's 18m-high sculpture for Paris Olympics

In the days leading up to the opening of the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games, Patrick Ollier, the President of the Métropole du Grand Paris, and Mathieu Hanotin, the Mayor of Saint-Denis and President of Plaine Commune, inaugurated Convergence: 54.5˚ Arc x 14. The monumental work by Bernar Venet is situated adjacent to the Olympic Aquatic Centre, and is the only monumental work that has been created to mark the occasion of the Paris 2024 Summer Games.

"My sculpture, Convergence: 54.5˚ Arc x 14, is a work of imposing dimensions, measuring 18 meters high and weighing about 40 tonnes. Made to be shown during the Paris 2024 events, it is two sets of vertical arcs that are immediately recognizable as a symbolic gesture. Together, they constitute asymmetrical but well-balanced encounters, or, as the title says, convergences. This piece, characteristic of my visual vocabulary, comprises an ensemble of similarly sized curved sections of Corten steel.

Most of my sculptural work over the last few years centers on the concept of line, whether Straight Lines, broken lines (the Angles), curved lines (the Arcs) or lines liberated from their geometrical origins that I call Indeterminate Lines. My decision to go with arcs for this particular piece made it possible to move toward what I was trying to achieve from my preliminary sketches: supple elements that embrace one another, connecting and harmonizing like an open-ended alliance stretching into the airspace over this spectacular Olympic site."