Events - Grevin Wax Museum : Le Diamantaire will illuminate the Salle des Colonnes with a unique work of art

By Mulder, 27 august 2025

For over a century, the Grévin Museum has continued to cultivate a tradition that sets it apart: combining its architectural and artistic heritage with contemporary creations that engage with history. Since its inauguration in 1882, the museum has surrounded itself with renowned sculptors and craftsmen to bring sumptuous spaces such as the Coupole and the Salle des Colonnes to life. These baroque settings, where visitors can still admire busts by Michelangelo, Benvenuto Cellini, Germain Pilon, and Jean Goujon, as well as paneling and marble by Esnault-Pelterie, welcomed the first wax figures on June 5, 1882. This blend of ancient and modern art remains the museum's trademark, and it is in this vein that the collaboration with Le Diamantaire, one of the most unique artists of his generation, was born. The work will be available for visitors to Grévin on Wednesday, June 10, in the morning.

It all began in 2021, when Patricia Girbeau, artistic director of Grévin since 2011, stumbled upon Le Diamantaire's work on Instagram. Fascinated by his world of street art and reflections, she suggested to Yves Delhommeau, the museum's general manager, that they invite the artist to create a new work for the Salle des Colonnes. The idea was simple but powerful: to bring the street and the energy of the contemporary into a preserved Louis XIV setting, offering visitors a unique meeting point between past and present. The result is a monumental mirrored piece measuring three meters by one meter thirty, installed in such a way as to multiply the play of light and invite visitors to photograph themselves in front of this urban diamond. From Wednesday 10th, the public will be able to discover this installation, which redefines the Salle des Colonnes as a showcase of reflections and contrasts.

To understand the significance of this collaboration, we need to look back at the unusual career of Le Diamantaire, born in Caen in 1987. His vocation began in 2001, when he discovered Obey's famous collage André the Giant Has a Posse. Fascinated by this way of using the street as a medium for creation, he took up graffiti and covered the walls of his hometown to such an extent that he was banned from painting. Far from giving up, he then explored stenciling, a more figurative and striking technique, while at the same time training in metalwork and boilermaking. These manual skills fueled his creativity and became the foundation for his future work.

In 2008, he moved to Paris and trained in visual communication. Inspired by artists with strong identities such as Invader, Zevs, and Gilbert, he chose the diamond as his symbol. But his originality lies elsewhere: he does not use spray paint or murals as his main medium, but mirrors. His materials come from the streets themselves: mirrors that have been salvaged, cut, recycled into two-dimensional diamonds, painted, and numbered. Since 2011, his “street jewelry” has been scattered throughout Paris, before traveling to New York, Montreal, Los Angeles, Miami, and Zurich. Each work is both a gift and a message: transforming a symbol of luxury and exclusivity into art that is accessible to all.

Le Diamantaire's evolution is marked by a series of milestones that testify to his ambition. In 2012, he moved beyond the streets to exhibit in galleries in Paris and Zurich. In 2013, he held his first solo exhibition at the Derouillon gallery, then left for Los Angeles to meet up with his friend Kaï Aspire, with whom he collaborated on a monumental mural on Melrose Avenue. 2014 was a pivotal year: supported by a patron who offered him a huge 900 m² studio, he designed large-scale works, such as 4000, a four-by-four-meter steel sculpture exhibited in the Paris suburbs. This shift to the third dimension heralded his future monumental work.

The following years confirmed his status as a contemporary artist. Invited to the MURAL festival in Montreal in 2014, he followed up with a solo exhibition at the Station 16 gallery, then in Paris, at Wide Painting and in the MISS KO restaurant designed by Philippe Starck. His creations, always centered on the diamond, became multiple: steel, wood, metal, engraving, but always with the same play of reflections and angles that transforms perception. In 2015, his exhibition Diamonds are forever II demonstrated the infinite perspectives offered by his emblem, with pieces such as Hypercube and the spectacular Diamantoscope, halfway between a kaleidoscope and an astronomical instrument.

The arrival of Le Diamantaire at the Musée Grévin is therefore a logical continuation of an artist who has always sought to offer the public a new vision of the diamond, not as a possession, but as a visual and collective experience. By installing his work in the Salle des Colonnes, he links the baroque splendor of the 19th century to contemporary questions about value, art, and sharing. Where classical busts capture history, his diamond mirrors reflect the faces of the present, making the visitor himself an integral part of the work.

Through this project, Patricia Girbeau and Yves Delhommeau confirm that Grévin remains a living place, open to dialogue between heritage and modernity. And Le Diamantaire, by transforming street mirrors into jewels of light, offers an artistic and poetic lesson: sometimes luxury lies not in what we possess, but in what we share. This new stage at Grévin reminds us that art, whether born in a graffiti-covered alleyway or under a golden dome, always has the same mission: to amaze, question, and connect.

(Source: press release)