Commissioned by the Arison Arts Foundation for the Miami Art Museum, construction of Je Souhaite began in 2008. The piece was given an extremely tight time frame for completion as it was to make its debut in The Peninsula Project. In Je Souhaite John Henry has altered the design of the standard tube and slab components by tapering the forms- transforming them into blades and spears and adding a new dimension of difficulty to the fabrication process. Je Souhaite competes as one of John Henry’s most massive and complex pieces to date standing 80’ high and weighing almost 70,000 lbs.

John named the piece Je Souhaite which means “I wish” in French. He didn’t want to create a memorial to anything in particular but rather he wanted to create something that was more hopeful and forward looking. Je Souhaite provides the viewer with a new experience at every viewing point. The four slabs lean and intersect, end and begin again. The tubes rise and fall and cross. The sculpture produces a completely new composition from each side. From one side the piece is streamlined and almost simplistic, from another the interactions of lines are layered and intense. Je Souhaite represented Miami in John Henry’s Peninsula Project Exhibition were it was situated in Bicentennial Park at the end of the deep-water slip of the Miami seaport. The City of Miami, The Arison Arts Foundation, Miami Art Museum and TRC Worldwide engineers worked together to bring Je Souhaite to the City of Miami and provide a perfect site for the piece. The piece now finds its home at the Port of Miami.

About Art Nouveau Gallery

Art Nouveau Galeria was founded in Maracaibo, Venezuela in 1987 by Elizabeth Hazim de Castillo and in 2010 she opened a space in Wynwood, Miami, known as Art Nouveau Gallery with her daughter in law and partner Georgina Chumaceiro. The gallery features modern and contemporary art focused on the geometric abstraction art, widely explored in Latin America, and ranges from emerging and mid-career artists to major historical art figures such as Carlos Cruz-Diez, Jesús Rafael Soto, John Henry, Julio Le Parc and Rogelio Polesello, among others.
Art Nouveau Gallery Miami, apart from a strong secondary market, represents highly credentialed Latin American Geometric Abstraction artists such as Rafael Barrios, Joao Galvao, Alberto Cavalieri, Paúl Amundarain and Abel Ventoso.

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