JEPPE HEIN
RUINART
Collateral event of the 59th international art exhibition La Biennale di Venezia
VENICE PALAZZO ROCCA
22 APRIL – 24 APRIL 2022
Ruinart entrusted its Carte Blanche 2022 to visual artist Jeppe Hein for a new artistic interpretation of its history and know-how. The Champagne House has always promoted art as a way to understand the world around us, connect with each other and heighten our awareness. Jeppe Hein reflects this commitment through an installation that awakens our senses and touches our hearts, while placing each of us at the centre of a delightful participatory experience. Playing with the element of surprise and magic of the unexpected, the artist invites us to share emotions and reflect on the intangible value of the present moment, which is both fragile and memorable.
Jeppe Hein is one of those artists who starts with very simple things but takes us much further. A grape, a piece of wet chalk and the specific smell that hovers over the vineyard lingering above the vines: he translates his first impressions of Ruinart’s terroir into fragments of matter and emotion. He invites us to feel and be inspired by the natural connections between things. A collective experience that is unique each time. An artistic installation to live RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW.
For Jeppe Hein, making and tasting champagne – from the moment the grapes are harvested to the moment the wine sparkles in your mouth – is a total sensory experience. He translated the essence of this into an art installation to be experienced RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW.
RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW is a participatory installation that appeals to the five senses and summons the four elements – earth/soil, water/rain, air/wind and fire/sun – which are essential to champagne making. To renew the experience of nature and bring it into our daily life at the art fairs, Jeppe Hein uses “fragments of matter and emotion” that awaken our senses and connect us to ourselves and the world. This generous installation invites everyone to experience a small sensory epiphany.
Imagine… A large mirror in the centre of the installation has a round opening for
you to reach inside and take one of the four elements, which you can
experience with your five senses. You are invited to:
See yourself in the mirror.
Touch the chalk.
Listen to a delicate drop of essential oil falling into the palm of your hand.
Smell the scent of the Chardonnay flower in the air.
Taste a sun-ripened raisin.
The mirror is a motif, as much as a material, that recurs in the work of Jeppe Hein. Not to mention, of course, the mirror speech bubbles, each with an appellative message. It is no coincidence that the mirror is also present in traditional rituals relating to spirituality, such as Buddhism, which the artist has studied extensively. The psyche evokes, in its precision and neutrality, the clairvoyance that can be achieved by practicing meditation, through distanced observation of one’s thoughts and feelings. In Jeppe Hein’s work, viewers are often confronted with their own image and its ambivalence.
“The mirror offers an interesting and important possibility of encounter: its surface reflects you and your surroundings, but also enables you to look yourself in the eye. Who are you? When you look into someone else’s eyes, are you seeing their soul or your own reflected in their gaze?” asks Jeppe Hein.
Purity, clarity and simplicity are at the heart of his work, without excluding depth.
Jeppe Hein’s Modified Social Benches encouraged exploration and experimentation through a variety of activities, from play to rest. They are the counterreaction to any architectural tool that dictates the movement of bodies in space. With his benches Hein creates a space for social interaction and invite deceleration.
© Images Bubbles Strempel Photography
© Image Bench Studio Jeppe Hein, Exhibition Kunsten Museum of Modern Art Aalborg, Denmark, 2021
VENICE PALAZZO ROCCA22 APRIL – 24 APRIL 2022
Ruinart entrusted its Carte Blanche 2022 to visual artist Jeppe Hein for a new artistic interpretation of its history and know-how. The Champagne House has always promoted art as a way to understand the world around us, connect with each other and heighten our awareness. Jeppe Hein reflects this commitment through an installation that awakens our senses and touches our hearts, while placing each of us at the centre of a delightful participatory experience. Playing with the element of surprise and magic of the unexpected, the artist invites us to share emotions and reflect on the intangible value of the present moment, which is both fragile and memorable.
Jeppe Hein is one of those artists who starts with very simple things but takes us much further. A grape, a piece of wet chalk and the specific smell that hovers over the vineyard lingering above the vines: he translates his first impressions of Ruinart’s terroir into fragments of matter and emotion. He invites us to feel and be inspired by the natural connections between things. A collective experience that is unique each time. An artistic installation to live RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW.
For Jeppe Hein, making and tasting champagne – from the moment the grapes are harvested to the moment the wine sparkles in your mouth – is a total sensory experience. He translated the essence of this into an art installation to be experienced RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW.
RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW is a participatory installation that appeals to the five senses and summons the four elements – earth/soil, water/rain, air/wind and fire/sun – which are essential to champagne making. To renew the experience of nature and bring it into our daily life at the art fairs, Jeppe Hein uses “fragments of matter and emotion” that awaken our senses and connect us to ourselves and the world. This generous installation invites everyone to experience a small sensory epiphany.
Imagine… A large mirror in the centre of the installation has a round opening for
you to reach inside and take one of the four elements, which you can
experience with your five senses. You are invited to:
See yourself in the mirror.
Touch the chalk.
Listen to a delicate drop of essential oil falling into the palm of your hand.
Smell the scent of the Chardonnay flower in the air.
Taste a sun-ripened raisin.
“The mirror offers an interesting and important possibility of encounter: its surface reflects you and your surroundings, but also enables you to look yourself in the eye. Who are you? When you look into someone else’s eyes, are you seeing their soul or your own reflected in their gaze?” asks Jeppe Hein.
Purity, clarity and simplicity are at the heart of his work, without excluding depth.
Jeppe Hein’s Modified Social Benches encouraged exploration and experimentation through a variety of activities, from play to rest. They are the counterreaction to any architectural tool that dictates the movement of bodies in space. With his benches Hein creates a space for social interaction and invite deceleration.© Images Bubbles Strempel Photography
© Image Bench Studio Jeppe Hein, Exhibition Kunsten Museum of Modern Art Aalborg, Denmark, 2021