From May 17, 2015, Brooklyn Bridge Park will house the Public Art Fund’s new tangible exhibition, Please Touch the Art by Danish artist Jeppe Hein. Unlike most exhibitions this show encourages the viewer to participate. You can come and interact with fountains that will shoot seven-foot vertical columns of water upward at staggered intervals, creating a series of water walls and rooms that viewers can walk in and out of. Without getting wet! At Pier 3 Greenway terrace mirror-polished stainless steel posts will be creating a Mirror Labyrinth, spaced evenly apart to create pathways for visitors to walk through, their surfaces reflecting the surrounding, distorting every day landscapes. Throughout the entire park there will also be red benches twisting and bending harmoniously with the existing landscape, in an installation called Modified Social Benches.
The show in total will feature 18 sculptures from three bodies of work by Hein. It will be the artist’s largest show in the U.S. to date, taking over the total 1.3-mile long park, from the Manhattan Bridge to the waterfront and Pier 6. The show will run until April 17, 2016. Mirror Labyrinth and Modified Social Benches will both be shown in the US for the first time in this exhibition.
Hein studied at the Royal Danish Academy of Art between 1997 and 2003 and at the Städelschule in Frankfurt between 1999 and 2000. As a student Hein became co-founder of OTTO, a non-commercial organization, which between 1997-2000, organized art exhibitions at various spaces in Denmark. Hein also co-founded Karriere Bar with his sister Lærke Hein, a bar and restaurant situated in Copenhagen that features site-specific artworks by international artists.
Nicholas Baume, the organization’s director and chief curator says: “And through that process — whether it’s through something joyful or something funny or something strange or something perplexing — he works on all of those human and intuitive levels to then allow you to think differently about your environment, about yourself, about who you’re with and where you are.”
Hein’s work will engage your senses and expand your imagination, connecting you with your surroundings in an innovative way. It will leave you with new expectations of how everyday objects can function in an exciting way. This show has the potential to be an all-encompassing interactive experience.