Artist JR Completes His Giant Mural on a Tribeca Building

JR's finished work Aug. 5, on the side of 102 Franklin St. The leaping ballerina, against the backdrop of a French housing project, were part of a multidiscipline art piece. Photo: April Koral/Tribeca Trib

The French artist JR, with the help of assistants, a crane and many gallons of paste, finished papering the side of 102 Franklin Street on Wednesday, Aug. 5. He transformed it into a giant mural, with the image of a four-story-tall ballerina leaping towards the building’s rooftop.

Known for papering large urban spaces with photographic images, JR acquired the wall, next to 100 Franklin Street, at Sixth Avenue, as his latest “canvas.” One hundred Franklin is a former parking lot now owned by developers DDG who recently broke ground for a residential project.

The mural grows out of JR’s short film, “Les Bosquets,” which premiered this year at the Tribeca Film Festival and features Les Bosquets housing project outside Paris, the subject of large-scale documentary works by JR for more than a decade.  The leaping ballerina appears in the film as part of a ballet choreographed by the artist.

A spokesman for DDG could provide little information on how the developer and JR came together except to say, in an email, that “there isn’t a formal collaboration. DDG is just lending the space and helped with the permitting. DDG does a lot in the arts…so people in the art world tend to come to them for stuff.”

Approached by the Trib across from his newly completed work, JR declined to be interviewed.