Laurence Jenkell, internationally known under the signature JENK, is a self-taught French sculptor and painter born in December 1965. Based on the French Riviera, where she has lived and worked for many years, she has established herself as one of France's most distinctive contemporary artists thanks to her celebrated Wrapping Bonbon sculptures. Exhibited in major capitals around the world and featured in numerous public and private collections, her works have elevated the humble candy into a universal artistic symbol.

Laurence Jenkell's career is anything but conventional. Without any formal academic training in fine arts, she gradually developed her own artistic language through years of independent research and experimentation. In the mid-1990s, she began exploring a wide variety of materials and casting techniques in order to understand their physical properties. Working alone for several years, she embraced trial and error, continuously experimenting until she achieved complete mastery of plexiglass—a material that would become the foundation of her artistic practice.

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Her earliest experiments took place under remarkably modest conditions. Her studio was improvised, and her primary laboratory was nothing more than her own kitchen. Using a simple domestic oven, she tested temperatures, curing times, pigment inclusions, distortions, resin flow, and moulding techniques. This lengthy period of experimentation enabled her to gradually master a material renowned for its technical complexity. Rather than seeking spectacular visual effects, Laurence Jenkell pursued a very precise objective: to give solid material the illusion of perpetual movement.

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From this relentless quest emerged what would become her unmistakable artistic signature: the twisting technique she named Wrapping. The process consists of twisting the material around itself to recreate the universal gesture of twisting the ends of a wrapped candy. This twist is far more than a technical procedure; it lies at the very heart of her artistic vision. It gives birth to a form that is immediately recognisable—simple, dynamic, and profoundly expressive.

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Thanks to this innovation, Laurence Jenkell created her first Bonbon sculpture, a seminal work that would define the course of her career. This motif, which she would continue to reinterpret throughout the years, has become one of the great icons of contemporary French sculpture. For almost two decades, the artist has explored this form in an extraordinary variety of materials, including plexiglass, mirror-polished aluminium, bronze, polyester, resin, marble, stainless steel, and even Murano glass. Each material offers a different interpretation of this universal form, appearing at times translucent, monumental, precious, or mineral.

Although the candy remains the central subject of her work, it quickly transcended its purely decorative appeal. Laurence Jenkell has often explained that this form originates in her own personal history. Deprived of sweets during her childhood, she developed a deep fascination with an object charged with memories, desire, and frustration. By transforming it into monumental sculpture, she elevates an everyday object into a work of art with universal significance. The candy thus becomes a symbol of childhood, pleasure, memory, and the passage of time.

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This autobiographical dimension permeates her entire body of work. For the artist, the twist does not simply represent the movement of a candy wrapper. It also symbolises life's trials, inner tensions, and the ability to transform hardship into creative energy. She frequently describes the twisting gesture as a way of "twisting the neck of the past" in order to free herself from it. Beneath the apparent lightness of her sculptures lies a deeper reflection on resilience, identity, and personal reconstruction.

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One of the most remarkable aspects of Laurence Jenkell's work is her relationship with materials. Like all sculptors, she maintains an ongoing dialogue with the substances she shapes. Yet her self-taught background has enabled her to master every stage of the sculptural process—from modelling and mould-making to casting and polishing. This empirical knowledge grants her exceptional creative freedom and continually opens new possibilities for artistic exploration.

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Over the years, her artistic vocabulary has expanded considerably. While the Bonbon remains her most iconic creation, Laurence Jenkell has developed several additional series inspired by the universal symbols that define contemporary society. She has reinterpreted monetary signs such as the dollar, the euro, the yen, and the yuan, exploring the way economic symbols shape our collective imagination. Other series focus on national flags, numbers, letters of the alphabet, and symbols drawn from the world's cultural heritage, always with the same ambition: to transform universally recognisable signs into colourful sculptures that speak to audiences across cultures.

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This ability to create an accessible visual language largely explains her international success. Laurence Jenkell's sculptures are now installed in public spaces, museums, foundations, and major artistic events across the globe. They have been exhibited at internationally renowned occasions including the Cannes Film Festival, the Monaco Grand Prix, the G20 Summit, the Olympic Games, and numerous exhibitions throughout Europe, the United States, the Middle East, and Asia. Their monumental scale and vibrant Pop aesthetic allow them to engage instantly with a remarkably broad audience.

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Laurence Jenkell's artistic universe stands at the crossroads of Pop Art, Nouveau Réalisme, and contemporary monumental sculpture. Like the great Pop artists, she appropriates an everyday object and elevates it into an artistic and symbolic icon. However, her work remains profoundly personal, with colour, material, and the act of twisting becoming the true subjects of the sculpture itself. Each piece possesses its own unique identity, enhanced by the choice of materials, finishes, and the ever-changing effects of light.

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Today, Laurence Jenkell continues to pursue her artistic research with unwavering dedication. Remaining faithful to the Wrapping principle that established her international reputation, she constantly explores new materials, new dimensions, and new forms in order to enrich her artistic vocabulary. Her sculptures, regularly featured at leading international art fairs and on the global contemporary art market, bear witness to a remarkably coherent artistic vision developed over nearly three decades.

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By elevating a simple candy into an artistic icon, Laurence Jenkell has created a universal visual language in which everyone can project their own childhood memories, emotions, and personal history. Beneath the apparent sweetness of her sculptures lies a subtle reflection on memory, desire, transformation, and resilience. It is precisely this combination of formal simplicity, technical mastery, and symbolic depth that explains Laurence Jenkell's distinctive place within the landscape of international contemporary art.

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Laurence Jenkell's Market Performance and Auction Record

Laurence Jenkell's market experienced significant growth throughout the 2010s, driven by the international success of her celebrated Wrapping Bonbons and by an increasingly strong presence at major art fairs, institutional exhibitions, and leading galleries. This growing visibility was quickly reflected on the auction market, where her monumental mirror-polished aluminium sculptures became the most sought-after works.

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Her current auction record was established at Sotheby's New York on 17 November 2017, when Bonbon Aluminium Polimiroir (2013) achieved US$337,500 (including buyer's premium). This result remains the artist's highest auction price to date. Since then, several major works have continued to sell for more than US$200,000, confirming collectors' sustained interest in her earliest sculptures, monumental formats, and the rarest editions.

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Following a period of particularly rapid appreciation between 2013 and 2019, Laurence Jenkell's market has entered a more mature phase of consolidation. Collectors have become increasingly selective, favouring monumental sculptures and works executed in mirror-polished aluminium, bronze, or Murano glass, while more common editions tend to achieve more varied results depending on provenance, condition, size, and rarity. This evolution reflects a market that has reached maturity, where the quality and significance of each individual work now outweigh the artist's name alone.

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Auction activity nevertheless remains steady. More than 200 works have already appeared at public auction worldwide, with approximately 15 to 20 lots offered each year, primarily in Europe and the United States. This regular presence on the secondary market confirms Laurence Jenkell's lasting appeal among collectors of contemporary sculpture.

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Laurence Jenkell's Most Iconic Works

Laurence Jenkell's creations are instantly recognisable thanks to their distinctive visual identity, built around the principle of Wrapping, or twisting. While the Wrapping Bonbon remains her defining work, the artist has progressively developed several series that expand her artistic universe while remaining faithful to this founding gesture.

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Wrapping Bonbon

The Wrapping Bonbon is unquestionably Laurence Jenkell's signature work and the sculpture for which she is best known worldwide. Conceived in the mid-1990s after several years of experimentation with plexiglass, it reproduces the universal shape of a candy wrapped in its twisted wrapper. Created in plexiglass, bronze, mirror-polished aluminium, marble, polyester, resin, stainless steel, and Murano glass, it has become the emblem of her artistic career.

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Behind its apparent simplicity lies a rich symbolic dimension. The sculpture evokes universal themes such as childhood, memory, transmission, pleasure, and indulgence, while the twisting gesture itself becomes a metaphor for resilience and personal transformation. Today, Wrapping Bonbons can be found in public and private collections across more than fifty countries.

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Candy Nations

Created for the 2011 G20 Summit in Cannes, Candy Nations is one of Laurence Jenkell's most celebrated and widely publicised series. Each sculpture takes the form of her iconic Bonbon while displaying the flag of one of the participating nations.

By combining a universally recognisable object with national identities, Jenkell transforms the candy into a symbol of dialogue, cultural diversity, and peaceful coexistence. The monumental installation attracted considerable international attention and played a key role in establishing the artist's global reputation.

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DNA

With the DNA series, Laurence Jenkell extends the principle of twisting into the form of the double helix. Here, she explores themes of identity, genetic heritage, human memory, and the transmission of life itself.

This collection marks an important evolution in her artistic vocabulary by demonstrating that Wrapping is not confined to the candy motif alone, but can become an autonomous sculptural language capable of expressing broader universal concepts.

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Wrapping Twist

The Wrapping Twist series pushes the exploration of movement even further. The sculptures gradually abandon the explicit reference to the candy in favour of pure formal dynamics. Curves, torsion, reflections, and flowing lines become the true subject of the work.

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These increasingly abstract sculptures highlight Laurence Jenkell's artistic maturity and demonstrate her desire to extend the possibilities of her signature gesture beyond its original symbolic form.

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Monacandy, Robots and Ice Candy

Among her more recent creations are the Monacandy, inspired by the Principality of Monaco, the Robots series, which revisits toys and popular culture through the language of twisting, and Ice Candy, a collection exploring transparency, crystalline effects, and the interaction of light with sculptural form.

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Together, these series illustrate Laurence Jenkell's constant commitment to renewing her artistic language while remaining faithful to the Wrapping principle that has defined her work for nearly three decades.

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Major Exhibitions

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For more than two decades, Laurence Jenkell has exhibited extensively throughout Europe, North America, Asia, and the Middle East. Her sculptures have been presented in more than fifty countries, appearing in museums, galleries, international art fairs, and large-scale public installations. This global presence has established her as one of the most internationally recognised French contemporary sculptors of her generation.

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Candy Nations – World Trade Center Campus, New York (2018–2019)

Undoubtedly Laurence Jenkell's most prestigious international installation, Candy Nations was exhibited across the World Trade Center Campus in Lower Manhattan between 2018 and 2019. Monumental sculptures were installed around One World Trade Center, Oculus Plaza, Liberty Park, and John F. Kennedy International Airport, offering exceptional visibility in one of the world's most symbolic urban environments.

The exhibition celebrated cultural diversity through Jenkell's iconic Bonbon sculptures, each decorated with the flag of a different nation. Following the tragic history of the site, the installation conveyed a powerful message of unity, hope, and peaceful coexistence, reinforcing the universal dimension of the artist's work.

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G20 Summit, Cannes (2011)

Laurence Jenkell gained international recognition during the 2011 G20 Summit in Cannes, where her Candy Nations sculptures represented the flags of the participating countries.

Installed throughout the city during this major diplomatic event, the series quickly became one of the summit's most memorable artistic projects. By transforming her iconic candy into a symbol of international dialogue, Jenkell demonstrated the ability of contemporary art to communicate beyond cultural and linguistic boundaries.

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Venice Biennale – Official Collateral Events

Laurence Jenkell has been invited on several occasions to exhibit as part of the collateral events of the Venice Biennale, notably in 2015, 2017, 2019, and 2024.

Recognised as one of the world's most influential contemporary art events, the Venice Biennale provided an ideal international platform for her sculptures, allowing her work to reach collectors, museum curators, and art professionals from around the globe. These repeated invitations reflect the growing international recognition of her artistic practice.

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Art Miami and Art Basel Miami Beach

Represented by several leading international galleries, Laurence Jenkell has regularly participated in Art Miami and Art Basel Miami Beach, two of the most important events on the global contemporary art market.

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Her monumental sculptures, with their vibrant colours and instantly recognisable forms, have attracted significant attention from international collectors, particularly in the fields of contemporary sculpture and luxury design. These fairs have played a major role in expanding her presence within the American art market.

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World Economic Forum, Davos (2015)

In 2015, Laurence Jenkell's works were presented during the World Economic Forum in Davos, one of the world's leading gatherings of political, economic, and cultural leaders.

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Displayed in this prestigious international context, her sculptures illustrated the growing recognition of art as a vehicle for dialogue, diplomacy, and cultural exchange. Their presence at Davos further strengthened Jenkell's international profile and highlighted the universal appeal of her artistic language.

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Other Significant Venues

Throughout her career, Laurence Jenkell has also exhibited at numerous prestigious institutions and cultural venues, including the Villa Datris Foundation, the Grand Palais in Paris, where her celebrated Barbie Loves Jenkell installation attracted considerable public attention, the Grimaldi Forum Monaco, the Yacht Club de Monaco, the Heydar Aliyev Center in Baku, and Opera Gallery, with exhibitions in Paris, London, New York, Hong Kong, Dubai, Singapore, Geneva, Monaco, and other major cities.

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These exhibitions have contributed to establishing Laurence Jenkell as one of the leading ambassadors of contemporary French sculpture on the international stage.

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A Universal Artistic Language

Over the course of nearly three decades, Laurence Jenkell has built a body of work that is instantly recognisable yet constantly evolving. Through the simple act of twisting material, she has transformed an everyday object into a universal artistic symbol capable of transcending cultural, geographical, and generational boundaries.

Her sculptures are appreciated for their vibrant aesthetic qualities, technical sophistication, and emotional resonance. Whether displayed in museums, public spaces, or private collections, they invite viewers to reconnect with childhood memories while reflecting on broader themes such as identity, resilience, transmission, and the passage of time.

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Today, Laurence Jenkell occupies a distinctive position within the international contemporary art scene. By combining technical innovation, formal elegance, and symbolic depth, she has created an artistic language that is both immediately accessible and intellectually engaging. Her Wrapping technique remains one of the most original sculptural signatures to emerge from contemporary French art in recent decades, ensuring her place among the leading sculptors of her generation.

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To read on our blog:

-Laurence Jenkell's wrapping candies in Saudi Arabia

-Laurence Jenkell's wrapping bonbons sculptures