Modified Social Benches is a series of unusual sculptural pieces installed in various public spaces. The benches were originally conceptualised as a humorous critique of the controlling and marginalising designs of urban space. The basic form of the benches emulates the traditional park or garden be...
Modified Social Benches is a series of unusual sculptural pieces installed in various public spaces. The benches were originally conceptualised as a humorous critique of the controlling and marginalising designs of urban space. The basic form of the benches emulates the traditional park or garden bench but has been modified to various degrees, turning the act of sitting into a distinct physical endeavour. They challenge us to sit, climb and play on them without losing our balance. Though ordinary, these benches are intended to be used in an extraordinary way, generating social interaction. By altering their shape, Jeppe Hein has created playful furniture categorised somewhere between works of art and functional design objects. Hein’s works place spectators at the centre of events and focus on their experience and perception of the surrounding space.
Now based in Berlin, Jeppe Hein is a Danish artist born in 1974 in Copenhagen. He studied at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen and at the Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main. Jeppe Hein is well known for his experimental and interactive works, which 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 humour, his works engage in a lively dialogue with the traditions of Minimalist sculpture and Conceptual art of the 1970s. Jeppe Hein has exhibited widely all over the world. He took part in the Venice Biennale in 2003 and 2019. His permanent installations are displayed at the ARKEN Museum of Modern Art, La Guardia Airport in the United States, and also in Norway, the Netherlands, and the UK.
