This ceramic mosaic is distinguished by its scale, in keeping with the dimensions of the ventilation shaft for which it was intended. At a height of 28.50 metres, it covers an area of 850 m².

Patterns, structures and colors combine, offering different perceptions of the work, indeed different senses.

Other works in the La Défense collection are also based on ventilation shafts:

• Mosaïque and Vive le vent by Michel Deverne;
• Cheminée végétalisée by Édouard François;
• Le Moretti by Raymond Moretti;
• Cheminées by Philolaos Tloupas.

Born in Nantua in 1935, Grataloup achieves the feat of conveying an original artistic vision through monumental works. Using objective visual data as a starting point, he creates optical readings that are directly transposed into invented worlds of materials and colors, sometimes close to monochromatism. The artist presents us with the fiction of a world oscillating between the real and the unreal.