Jeppe Hein was born in Copenhagen and now lives and works in Copenhagen and Berlin. His arts education includes the Royal Danish Academy of Arts in Copenhagen and Städelschule, Hochschule für Bildende Künste in Frankfurt.
Jeppe Hein is widely known for his production of experiential and interactive artworks that can be positioned at the junction where art, architecture, and technical inventions intersect. Unique in their formal simplicity and notable for their frequent use of humor, his works engage in a lively dialogue with the traditions of minimalist sculpture and conceptual art of the 1970s. Jeppe Hein’s works often feature surprising and captivating elements which place spectators at the centre of events and focus on their experience and perception of the surrounding space.
Hein’s Modified Social Benches are an excellent example of the artist’s exploration of the phenomenon of perception, stemming from his consideration of social space and the way in which the form and context of the sculptures present unlikely or impossible seating structures. His work focuses on problemetizing the traditional relationships between sculpture, viewer and the environment.
The installations were brought to Dublin through Titration2: Park Fiction, the second phase of Dublin Arts Council’s on-loan outdoor sculpture exhibition series, which was installed in Dublin’s Coffman Park in 2008. The Park Fiction theme illustrates the whimsy and human connection to the outdoor recreational spaces in our midst. The exhibition was brought to life through four groupings, each ranging in size from three to more than 50 sculptural elements.
