Preview: Wednesday October 18, for invited guests of the fair
Questioning the ritualistic relationship between art and the spectator, Jeppe Hein creates witty and minimalist installations that intervene with their surroundings, deliberately blurring the boundaries between conceptual art and mechanical objects. Combining sculpture and installation with architecture and technology, he mixes the notion of the functional with the artistic. By encouraging a dialogue between the work, the viewer and the site of intervention, he suggests that the audience contributes to the completion of the work. While his style refers to minimalism, and to abstract concepts, he also tries to depart from an abstract experience by making the audience physically activate the work through action or presence.
For the 2017 edition of Fiac, 303 Gallery is pleased to show a solo presentation of Jeppe Hein’s Mirror Balloon series, which heighten the viewers’ awareness of themselves and their environment in the present moment. A group of twenty-one mirrored balloon sculptures appear to float at the ceiling above the viewers' heads, subtly moving with the circulation of air. Due to their shape and reflective surface, the balloons produce colorfully tinted and distorted perspectives of the surrounding space, similar to a fish-eye lens. Faithful to their helium-filled archetypes, the balloons seem moments away from soaring into the air and expanding these reflections to the infinite.
Jeppe Hein’s solo exhibition “Your Way” is on view at Château La Coste, Le Puy-Sainte-Réparade from October 1, 2017 through January 14, 2018. Recent exhibitions include “New End,” (ongoing) at World’s End park in Hingham, Massachusetts; “Reflection” (2016) at Kistefos Museum, Jevnaker; “This Way” (2015) at Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg; “A Smile For You” (2013) at Bonniers Konsthall, Stockholm and Wanås Konst, Sweden; “360 ̊” (2011) at the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, Japan; “1xMuseum, 10xRooms, 11xWorks” (2010) at Neues Museum Nürnberg; and “Sense City” (2009) at AroS Museum of Art, Århus, Denmark. His works are held in institutional collections such as the Tate Gallery, London; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt/Main; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. Hein lives and works in Berlin.