Jeppe Hein

As part of the 2005 programme, Centre Pompidou’s Espace 315 has invited the Danish artist Jeppe Hein to create a site-specific project. Planned for September 2005, this exhibition will permit the parisian public to discover for the first time the work of this young artist who has already made a mark on the international scene, in particular at the Venice Biennale and in New York.

Be they geometrical refined objects or installations that are both discrete and playful, Jeppe Hein’s interventions place him in the continuum of the Minimalist sculpture tradition. Yet, at the same time, his pieces set up an incongruous dialogue which the viewer. His work, which is very much a reflection on architecture, sets out to demonstrate the modularity of space, both by constructing it and deconstructing it.

Born in 1974 in Copenhagen, Jeppe Hein studied at the Royal Academy of Arts of Copenhagen and at Frankfurt’s Hochschule für Bildende Künste. He lives and works in Berlin.

His oeuvre is based upon the principle that the viewer can modify a work through his or her direct experience of it. The spectator can thus be a catalyst in several ways. There are works where the presence of a visitor can set into motion apparently inanimate objects, releasing a surprising mechanism; and inversely, certain pieces become animated only in the absence of the public. Jeppe Hein thus exploits the deceptive potential of the work of art, using humor to push back the limits of conceptual art. Always linked to the situation within a space, Jeppe Hein’s works disturb the environment and our relationship to it. The artist is inspired directly by the spatial environment “in situ.” The term “intervention,” therefore, seems an appropriate one for Jeppe Hein’s works, since they introduce a disquieting element into either neutral spaces (galleries, museums) or ordinary public spaces. Certain works are so discrete that they merge with the museum’s own structure. If the se objects obey the formal Minimal and Conceptual Art rule of the “effacement” of the maker, they are not however denoted as artworks until the moment they are innocently activated by the viewer, who, in that act, makes them exist as such– thus embracing the Duchampian tradition. If Conceptual Art delivers a critical reflection on the exhibition space, Jeppe Hein seems to play quite seriously with the codes of the utopia of the “white cube,” with the aim of destabilizing the museum habits of the viewers.

The exhibition at the Centre Pompidou is Jeppe Hein’s first in Paris. The artist participated in the Venice Biennial in 2003. More recently, he exhibited at PS1 in New York City, and in 2005 he will show work at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles.

Pressetext

Jeppe Hein
Kurator: Christine Macel
Ort: Espace 315