Jeppe Hein: RIGHT HERE RIGHT NOW
March - December 2022
Carte Blanche Maison Ruinart
Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France
Biennale de Venezia
Art Brussels, Belgium
Gallery Weekend Berlin, Germany
Frieze New York, USA
Art Basel, Switzerland
Frieze London, Great Britain
Paris+, France
Art Week Tokyo, Japan
Art Basel Miami, USA
Photos: Pierre Mouton; Jan Strempel Photography; Greg De Leeuw; Andrea Monica Hug; Matt Sills; BULK Images; LEWANDEZ
This is an invitation to embrace the moment.
To activate all our senses.
To open our hearts and reflect.
We are right here, right now.
We share this moment: by listening to our inner sensations,
tasting an artistic experience, watching our reflections
and contemplating our thoughts.
We are connected to the elements: earth, air, sun and water.
We are connected to each other.
We are connected to our deeper selves.
And this experience lifts us up,
like champagne bubbles floating in the air.
Ruinart entrusted its Carte Blanche 2022 to visual artist Jeppe Hein for a new artistic interpretation of its history and know-how. The Champagne House has always promoted art as a way to understand the world around us, connect with each other and heighten our awareness. Jeppe Hein reflects this commitment through an installation that awakens our senses and touches our hearts, while placing each of us at the centre of a delightful participatory experience. Playing with the element of surprise and magic of the unexpected, the artist invites us to share emotions and reflect on the intangible value of the present moment, which is both fragile and memorable. Jeppe Hein is one of those artists who starts with very simple things but takes us much further. A grape, a piece of wet chalk and the specific smell that hovers over the vineyard lingering above the vines: he translates his first impressions of Ruinart’s terroir into fragments of matter and emotion. He invites us to feel and be inspired by the natural connections between things. A collective experience that is unique each time. An artistic installation to live RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW.
RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW is a participatory installation that appeals to the five senses and summons the four elements – earth/soil, water/rain, air/wind and fire sun – which are essential to champagne making. To renew the experience of nature and bring it into our daily life at the art fairs, Jeppe Hein uses “fragments of matter and emotion” that awaken our senses and connect us to ourselves and the world. This generous installation invites everyone to experience a small sensory epiphany. Imagine… A large mirror in the centre of the installation has a round opening for you to reach inside and take one of the four elements, which you can experience with your five senses. You are invited to:
See yourself in the mirror.
Touch the chalk.
Listen to a delicate drop of essential oil falling into the palm of your hand.
Smell the scent of the Chardonnay flower in the air.
Taste a sun-ripened raisin.
On this journey to meet ourselves, the world and others, the artist guides us with messages inscribed on mirroring speech bubbles: “Right here, right now”; “The answer is within you”; “You are magic for me”; “What if this does not exist?”; “You change to change”; “Be aware of your small sensations”; “Say it all without saying anything”. Phrases that echo our own questions and encourage us to express them. Perplexed, happy, anxious or amused. It’s up to us to draw our emotional self-portrait with chalk on large panels whose colours (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet) and shapes (square, circle, triangle, rectangle, oval, rhombus, and hexagon) refer to the seven chakras – energy points in the body that inspire Jeppe Hein on many levels. Over time, the panels will be covered with hand-drawn faces as patterns to infinity.
