14/7/2014
Otto Piene
Two venues, Berlin
More Sky. Piene's intense collaboration with natural scientists and technicians opened new perspectives for art. At Neue Nationalgalerie, the slide installation 'The Proliferation of the Sun': colorfully shimmering shapes on over 1000 hand-painted glass slides are projected into the open exhibition space, resulting in what Piene calls a-poetic journey through space. At Deutsche Bank KunstHalle, early stencil paintings, light prints and light sculptures, impressive smoke drawings and fire paintings.
Berlin’s Neue Nationalgalerie and Deutsche Bank KunstHalle honor ZERO
artist Otto Piene with the large scale joint exhibition Otto Piene. More Sky.
As part of the exhibition, a spectacular sky art event will take place outside
the Neue Nationalgalerie on July 19, 2014.
At Neue Nationalgalerie, the slide installation The Proliferation of the Sun will be
presented each evening from10 pm to 3 am. Originally conceived for a small off
space in New York in 1967 and performed that same year in Nuremberg, Cologne,
and Dortmund, colorfully shimmering shapes on over 1000 hand-painted glass
slides are projected into the open exhibition space, resulting in what Piene calls a
―poetic journey through space.‖ The reconstruction of this spectral color experience
will develop a special evocative power in the upper hall of the Neue Nationalgalerie,
confronting the architecture of the Mies van der Rohe building — which will close
for renovations at the end of 2014 — with Piene’s idealism and utopian visions.
The exhibition at Deutsche Bank KunstHalle will explore the enormous breath and
experimental attitude of Otto Piene’s early work. Early stencil paintings, light prints
and light sculptures, impressive smoke drawings and fire paintings — some from
the Deutsche Bank’s own collection — will show the artist’s experimental approach
with the elements air, fire, and light, and the liberation of the arts that he engaged in.
The exhibition will close with a large light space designed for the exhibition.
To mark the start of the exhibition, a spectacular sky art event — supported by
Deutsche Bank AG — will be held outside Neue Nationalgalerie on the evening of
July 19, 2014. With three illuminated, up to 90 meters high air sculptures in star
shape, including the Berlin Superstar, which he showed for the first time in 1984 at
Berlin’s Technische Universität, Otto Piene will impressively play the Berlin night sky.
Born in Laasphe, Germany in 1928, Otto Piene is a key artist of the twentieth
century avant-garde and one of the founders of the international ZERO movement
in the 1960s. He played a definitive role in art’s programmatic new beginning by
including elementary natural forces. His smoke and fire images, his light spaces
and light ballets stand for a virtually romantic longing for unity with nature.
Otto Piene’s interdisciplinary large projects in public space were pioneering,
beginning in the late 1960s in the context of MIT’s Center for Advanced Visual
Studies, where he served as director beginning in 1974, or his monumental
rainbow for the closing ceremony of the 20th Olympic Games in Munich in 1972.
Piene’s intense collaboration with natural scientists and technicians opened new
perspectives for art that can be found echoed in contemporary positions like those
of Olafur Eliasson, Carsten Höller, or Tomás Saraceno.
A reprint of the central Piene publication More Sky from 1973 will be published by
Verlag der Buchhandlung Walter König (Cologne) to mark the exhibition.
For more information and press images to download, see the press area at
www.freunde-der-nationalgalerie.de and www.deutsche-bank-kunsthalle.de.
Neue Nationalgalerie and Deutsche Bank KunstHalle will be using the hashtag
#ottopieneberlin to communicate the exhibition in the social web. The exhibition’s
own website www.ottopieneinberlin.de will be online at the start of the exhibition.
Image: Otto Piene, Sky Event, for MIT 150th Anniversary Celebration, 2011. Killian Court, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Cambridge, MA, USA. Photo: Elizabeth Goldring Piene
Exhibition press contact
Dr. Katharina von Chlebowski
Andrea Fußstetter
Markus Farr
Fon +49 (0)30 26 39 48 80
Fax +49 (0)30 26 39 48 811
presse@freunde-der-nationalgalerie.de
www.freunde-der-nationalgalerie.de
Press contact
Deutsche Bank KunstHalle
Deutsche Bank AG
Dr. Klaus Winker
Taunusanlage 12
60325 Frankfurt
Fon + 49 (0)69 910 43800
Fax + 49 (0)69 910 32777
klaus.winker@db.com
Deutsche Bank KunstHalle
Sara Bernshausen
Unter den Linden 13/15
10117 Berlin
Fon + 49 (0)30 202093-14
Fax + 49 (0) 30 202093-20
sara.bernshausen@db.com
Press preview at Neue Nationalgalerie
Tuesday, July 15, 2014 at 10 p.m.
Neue Nationalgalerie, Potsdamer Str. 50, 10785 Berlin
Joint press conference
Wednesday, July 16, 2014 at 11 a.m.
Deutsche Bank KunstHalle, Unter den Linden 13/15, 10117 Berlin
Neue Nationalgalerie
Kulturforum, Potsdamer Str. 50 - 10785 Berlin
Opening hours Tue, Wed, Thu, Fri, Sat, Sun, 10 pm – 3 am
Mon closed
Admission free
Deutsche Bank KunstHalle
Unter den Linden 13/15 - 10117 Berlin
Opening hours 10 am – 8 pm daily
Admission 4 Euro, reduced fare 3 Euro
Mon admission free
Free admission for children up to 18