Les Olympiades is a pair of buildings. One could say that they both carry out a sort of visual synthesis between the Communist Party’s building and the “L’Humanité” Headquarters. Built on archways, their dark and curved glazed volumes evoke the curvilinear ebony facade of the Place du Colonel Fabien building. But here, the facades are set in a white concrete frame the base of which brings us back to the “L’Humanité” St-Denis Headquarters' block, as their base are pierced by a rhythm of circular openings that are siblings of the "portholes" which adorn the St-Denis building's top structure. Same piercings happen sometimes also on top of Olympiades' facades, but then only on flat ones.
I carried out a location scouting there during the summer of 2005, but only around Les Olympiades' outdoors. At the time the group of buildings belonged to the French Bank Société Générale (and that still seems to be the case), and my attempts to obtain an authorization concerning photographic scouting inside the buildings had failed. This was one of the reasons that made me discard these premises in my pictorial research on Niemeyer’s Paris Region buildings. Main reason being that the ownership of Les Olympiades by a Bank Consortium objectively put these buildings at odds with the DNA of the three other buildings designed by the Brazilian architect, all ethically foreign to any Corporate Group’s commercial concerns (even if these are of course completely legitimate). The vocation of a financial activity must avowedly be business and profit -and thus not necessarily Espace Niemeyer's cup of tea. Besides, this vocation was not especially conducive to stimulating and feeding the imagination -a necessary soil for the development of paintings that ambitionned to celebrate these buildings. All this explains why Quatre Traces d'Oscar (Four Traces of Oscar) remained Trois Traces d'Oscar.

This exhibition represents a milestone event for me, and sealed a long and fruitful collaboration with Gérard Fournier. An event to which Gérard was totally committed and not sparing his efficient efforts.