OTTO PIENE

Solo exhibition at ARNDT Berlin

March 24 - May 30, 2015

Opening | Saturday | March 21, 2015 | from 3 - 6pm | at ARNDT Berlin

ARNDT Berlin is pleased to present its inaugural solo exhibition by Otto Piene.
Otto Piene, co-founder of the renowned ZERO group, was a visionary artist of the twentieth century avant-garde who reinvented his multidisciplinary practice over a career spanning five decades.

Founded in 1957 along with fellow contemporary Heinz Mack, and later joined by Günther Uecker in 1961, the ZERO group was a European art movement established in the aftermath of World War II. Seeking new beginnings, with idealistic and utopian ambition, the group strove to produce a radical and optimistic global art that dissolved boundaries and embraced elemental forces of nature. Embodying a newly defined artistic freedom, the ZERO group worked across a wide range of media, exploring ideas of light, space, movement, structure, colour and art’s experiential possibilities. Exhibitions were often presented in the form of immersive installations employing painting, film, kinetic sculpture and performance.

Such conceptual underpinnings were maintained within Piene’s own practice manifest in the interconnection between art, nature, science and technology. Known for his process driven, experimental approach, Piene aimed to produce genre-defying works that investigated notions of ephemerality, synaesthesia – the blending of the senses – and aesthetic experience.

Early in his career Piene created letter reliefs, perforated grid-light boxes and grid pictures that offered resistance to light. At the end of the 1950s Piene developed his first smoke drawings and mechanised light sculptures. In 1957 Piene created the Grid Pictures – stencilled paintings made from half-tone screens with regularly arranged points in single colours (yellow, silver, white or gold) – such as his work Pure Energy (1958; New York, MOMA). Continuing to evolve his practice in a variety of forms, The Lichtballette ("light ballets") involved light from moving torches projected through grids, intended to alter the viewer's perception of space.

Otto Piene’s pioneering large-scale public projects and environments began in the late 1960s. His Sky Art Events comprised inflatable air sculptures that conveyed ideas concerning the cosmos and environmental awareness. Most notable was Piene’s monumental 700 metre-long rainbow created in 1972 for the closing ceremony of the 20th Olympic Games in Munich. The artist’s active collaborations with technicians and natural scientists helped to provide new perspectives for art and today find resonance in the work of contemporary artists such as Olafur Eliasson and Tomás Saraceno.

From the early 1980s Piene combined his seminal smoke and fire pictures with the grids from his ZERO group period. From 1998 onwards he developed immersive light rooms, utilising projections to alternate light intensity, colour and form for various museums such as the Kunsthalle Bremen. In 2008, Otto Piene founded the international ZERO foundation with Günther Uecker, Heinz Mack and Mattijs Visser. The foundation houses the ZERO group archives from the three Düsseldorfer artists as well as documents and photos from other related artists that include: Lucio Fontana, Yves Klein and Jean Tinguely.

Within this solo exhibition, a selection of works in a range of media will be presented dating from 1962 to 2004, from fire gouache on board and gouache on paper,  to oil on canvas and a site-specific light room installation.

Otto Piene’s solo exhibition at ARNDT Berlin coincides with the group exhibition “ZERO The International art movement of the 50s and 1960s” at the Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin from March 21 – June 8, 2015. This simultaneous exhibition presents works from the ZERO movement by artists that include Otto Piene, Heinz Mack and Günther Uecker.

Otto Piene (b. 1928, Laasphe, Germany - † 2014, Berlin, Germany) studied painting and art education at the Academy of Art in Munich and the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. From 1952 to 1957 he studied philosophy at the University of Cologne. In 1964 he was appointed Visiting Professor at the University of Pennsylvania. From 1968 to 1971 he was appointed the first Fellow at the newly founded Center for Advanced Visual Studies (CAVS) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). In 1972 he became a professor of Environmental Art at MIT.  In 1974 he was appointed as the Director of the CAVS and held this role until 1994.

Otto Piene represented Germany at the Venice Biennale in 1967 and 1971 and exhibited at Documenta in Kassel, Germany, in 1959, 1964 and 1977. In 1985, he exhibited at the São Paulo Biennial. In 2014 the Deutsche Bank KunstHalle and the Neue National Galerie in Berlin presented the exhibition "Otto Piene: More Sky". His works are housed in numerous international museum collections that include: the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York; the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; the National Museum of Modern Art (MOMAT), Tokyo; the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; and the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris.

ARNDT Berlin
Potsdamer Strasse 96
10785 Berlin
info@arndtberlin.com

VIDEOS
Video I | Roter Lichtgeist
Video II | Lichtraum
Video III | Schwarze Kugel
Video IV | Kubus
Video V | Light Ballett

PRESS

Art Forum | Must See Berlin | March 2015

Der Tagesspiegel | Befeuernd Die letzte von Otto Piene geplante Galerie-Schau | 11 April 2015

Tip Berlin | May 2015

OTTO PIENE
VIEWING ROOM I
July 16 – August 20, 2014

ARNDT takes project space at Gillman Barracks in Singapore
Opening: 18 January 2013, 6 - 9 p.m.

ARNDT Singapore is a project space, viewing room and Asian office for internationally renowned art dealer, Matthias Arndt.
The Singapore premises is situated in the new art destination, Gillman Barracks which is located in the center of Singapore that houses galleries and creative businesses, as well as the Centre for Contemporary Art (CCA) opening in 2013.
ARNDT Singapore will be staging shows of leading international artists as well as projects and curated shows featuring South East Asian Art.  The Singapore office will enable ARNDT to further develop both private and corporate collections and artist management in the Asia-Pacific Region.

ARNDT Singapore in the PRESS

The Straits Times | 14 Jan 2013 | Huang Lijie | Pairing artists from East and West

The first exhibition will feature:

Otto Piene, Heinz Mack and ZERO: Light & Reflection

January 18 to March 31, 2013

ARNDT is pleased to present Otto Piene, Heinz Mack and ZERO: Light & Reflection, the opening show of the new Singapore project space exhibiting works by Otto Piene, Heinz Mack, Lucio Fontana and Yves Klein.

The ZERO Group, celebrated worldwide in museums and collections with planned shows at Grand Palais Paris, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum NYC, and Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam from spring 2013 to 2015, has been founded by Otto Piene and Heinz Mack (and Günther Uecker) in 1958, with the goal of revolutionising post-war art, leaving received principles of art behind.
From now, light and movement was the central point of their art. What had begun in Düsseldorf, Germany, would develop in less than a decade into one of the most significant avant-garde movements of the 20th century.
When ZERO disbanded in 1966, the group had collaborated with a wide range of artist – such as Lucio Fontana, Yves Klein, Piero Manzoni, Jean Tinguely and Yayoi Kusama. After more than half a century of ZERO, the group is once again becoming a centre of public attention; therefore it was only a matter of time that the three exceptional artists Otto Piene, Heinz Mack and Günther Uecker would equalise with the wider circle of ZERO members on the international art landscape and market.

Please click here to view a complete list of exhibited works.

Opening Hours: Wed – Sun 11 a.m. - 7 p.m.
And by appointment: Singapore@arndtberlin.com

Address:
ARNDT Fine Art Singapore Pte. Ltd.
Gillman Barracks, 22, Lock Road, #01-35
Singapore 108939

Email: Singapore@arndtberlin.com
 

05.11.2011 - 29.02.2012
THE EPHEMERAL
Exhibition website

Group show with works by:
Absalon | Moridja Kitenge Banza | Joseph Beuys | Hanne Darboven | Wim Delvoye | Rebecca Horn | Mathilde ter Heijne | Jannis Kounellis | Keisuke Matsuura  | Christian Megert | Heinz Mack | David Noonan | Henk Peeters | Otto Piene | Jackson Pollock | Julian Rosefeldt | Matt Saunders | Chiharu Shiota | Miroslav Tichý | Grazia Toderi | Susan Turcot | Franz West | Nick van Woert | Yang Jiechang

The Ephemeral is an exhibition of 26 artists all dealing with elements and traces of the morbid, the delicate, and the temporary. They convey that small gestures can have a big impact and that especially the “silent scream” can be heard crystal clear once you fade out the ambient noise (das Grundrauschen) that surrounds us everywhere today.
Artists have always analyzed questions of the ephemeral in their work. In doing so, many artists have not merely used materials and means of expression that might disintegrate or which border on the immaterial, but rather have foregrounded the very changeability of the artwork itself.
Thus, for instance, the works of Jannis Kounellis contrast substantial materials such as coal and metal with mutable or intangible materials such as frost covering slabs or fire burning in lamps fuelled by a limited supply of petroleum.
Often enough, the ephemeral appears to be a fragile apparition wavering on the edge of existence, such as in a drawing by Joseph Beuys; the ephemeral draws its power precisely from its evanescence. But the ephemeral can also function as a warning highlighting the transience of all being. Such memento mori, remind the viewer of death and the finitude of the self. In a pietà by Beuys, the memento mori is twisted into a promise that death might not be the final station after all. The art of Miroslav Tichý seeks to apprehend the brevity of the moment by dwelling on a young girl bathing, suffused with the full romantic melancholy of one who is aware that beauty fades.
Some creative acts appear brief only when measured solely by temporal criteria. The flash of insight and inspiration is followed by what can be a protracted, laborious process, yet the final product nevertheless preserves the freshness and revelation of the distilled thought. The artwork transforms the thought into a form that allows the moment to be recreated, without allowing it, in its eternal repetition, to grow insipid. Movement too belongs to the fleeting manifestations of art, such as the elegant, occasionally jerky but nevertheless graceful motions of Rebecca Horn’s machines, or a historical moment captured on video. Julian Rosefeldt and Piero Steinle have gathered historical photographs of explosions of equally historic buildings to a pandemonium of iconoclasm. The time of the explosion becomes a point in time demonstrating both the finite nature of the moment as well as the powerful effects beyond the destruction. Even destroyed these moment keep their meaning. In these moments proves to be the special aura of the art, which is in the best position to act between the precarious and the constantly incomprehensible.
Grazia Toderi’s films have that ethereal and almost spiritual ambiance, impossible to localise in the past, present or future.
Heinz Mack had such an optimistic and constructive approach towards the future already in the works of his Zero phase in the 1960s: In his attempt to capture the traces and essence of light in his sculptures that look rather similar to scientific installations than to at that time traditional artworks, his work even 50 years later still looks like coming directly back from the future to pay us a visit.
The exhibition will be accompanied by its own webpage. Please visit www.theephemeral.com, contact us for further information at info@arndtberlin.com or download the online catalogue.