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The Light in the Dreams of Otto Piene

August 06th, 2014
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News from Berlin - “It all comes full circle.” Shortly before he died, Otto Piene (1928-2014) showed, through that sentence, the satisfaction that his work would be exhibited in Berlin, the city that saw his first solo show, again. Nonetheless, 24 hours after his work was presented the 17th of July both in the Neue Nationalgalerie and in the Kunsthalle of the Deutsche Bank, the great artist died at the age of 86, while riding in a taxi. Due to the sad news, the show became a posthumous homage that will be open to the public until the end of August.

The German artist was considered to be the painter of the light and the sky. He was art collective “ZERO” co-founder, member of the European movement that emerged after in the post-war period and a prolific installation artist who reinvented art in his own country, which was in ruins after the Second World War. As an artist he was brave, and his nouveau-realistic artworks developed from photorealistic acrylic painting to enormous steel structures.

On display in the “Otto Piene. More Sky” exhibit there is a recreation of the massive projection installation “Proliferation of the Sun”. This artwork includes over 1000 colorfully hand-painted glass slides projected into the open exhibition space, resulting in which Piene calls a “poetic journey through space.” At Deutsche Bank Kunsthalle his early stencil paintings, light prints and light sculptures, impressive smoke drawings and fire paintings can be found. According to the information provided by the Nationalgalerie, Piene’s dream of three floating white sculptures above the architecture of Mies van der Rohe was carried out according to his wishes on July 19th.

News from Berlin - Berlin Global