Artist
Jeppe Hein
Jeppe Hein was born in Copenhagen in 1974 and studied from 1997 to 2003 at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen and at the Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main. Here he was an assistant to Ólafur Elíasson. Since 1998 he has had solo and group exhibitions with his kinetic objects around the world and was a guest at the Venice Biennale in 2003. His works can also be found in private and public collections and well-known museums around the world, including in Germany, England, France, the Netherlands, Denmark, Japan and the USA. He has held a number of guest professorships and received awards and received the NEULAND Landscape Art Prize from the Lower Saxony Foundation in 2007, among others. He became known for surprising installations that involve the public. Jeppe Hein lives and works in Berlin.
Hiroshima Park, with a view of the town hall, the opera house and the Kleiner Kiel, is a popular meeting place in the middle of the city. Since 2004, the centre of the park has been the interactive water feature "Changing Invisibility" by the Danish artist Jeppe Hein, which reacts to the movements of its audience. When a person approaches from one of the four sides, the flow of water stops there, the wall collapses and clears the way inside. After a while, the wall closes again and reaches its full height. The installation is a work of art that appeals to people in many different ways. The water walls, which repeatedly collapse and grow in height, give the strictly geometrically designed facility a cheerful liveliness, as the appearance changes again and again due to the changing heights. Entering the room inside the water walls changes the perception, as the background noise and the constant movement of the water create a very special atmosphere. The passage of time, the changed perception of space inside, the sounds of the bubbling water, the spray of the fountains and, last but not least, the happy screams of the children (and adults) playing reach the senses.
