Rastersonne 2009 / 2009

THE WEALTH OF THE UNIVERSE

“Yes, I dream of a better world. Should I dream of a worse one?
Yes, I hope for a wider world. Should I hope for a smaller one?” (Piene)

Otto Piene produced his first grid patterns and vibratory light fields in 1957. In the same year he founded the group Zero in Düsseldorf with Heinz Mack. The Zero movement revolutionized postwar European art. It exploded the academic aesthetic sphere with light, movement, and the idea of the freedom of art – and by extension the freedom of man.

Fire, light, and air are the most important elements in Otto Piene’s work. His art develops out of the intention to unite technology and nature in his works, and in doing so he communicates with both the viewer’s rationale and soul.

His grid-like images were produced by pressing colored oil paint through a grid sieve onto the canvas. The raster dots may evenly cover the image surface in narrow, rhythmic raster stripes or in patterned circles. Light adds an element of movement and dynamic; Piene used particularly reflective colors such as white, yellow, silver, and gold to make the images seemingly vibrate. The purity of the light was to awaken pure emotion, while the light’s energy bundled in the raster marks was to influence the viewer’s energy.

Piene’s experiments with grid sieves inspired the artist’s work with smoke signals, through which his later fire images emerged. He allowed streams of light to fall through the sieve and observed as they gracefully danced on the walls of a dark room. The wall’s were the first projection surface for the “archaic light ballet,” which was first publicly shown in 1959 in his solo exhibition at Galerie Schmela in Düsseldorf. In doing so the light encompassed not only the traditional medium but more and more the entire space and therefore also the viewer.

Heinz Mack and Otto Piene published three editions of the magazine Zero between 1958–1961, at which point Günther Uecker joined the group. In the coming years they exhibited all across Europe and the US. Mehr Himmel (More Heaven) is Piene’s artistic slogan; with the light from powerful spotlights and lamps, he sketches his stories into the night sky. The inventor of “SkyArt,” he opened up new spaces for art and projected symbols of freedom – as well as air and light ballet – into the heavens. The group Zero was dissolved in 1966.

Now, fifty years after the first raster images, Piene has surprised us with his new Rastermoon – Ceramics which once again embodies the convergence of the four elements: the flow of water united with the clay, later steamed in the fire of a kiln and air dried. And there is more: the sieve’s raster ratio united with its metal, the sieve and the drops, the glaze and finishing coat of gold dust, platinum dust, red and black pigment.

Artistic deliberation meets the influence of natural forces and coincidence. The results of this virtually alchemistic process are supernaturally graceful slivers of heaven. They relate the myths of fire, flying, flying stars, suffering, elegance, and fragility. The costly gold and platinum glazes lend the pieces a cosmic glow. They capture the light, break and reflect it, and create on their netted surfaces an iridescent shimmer of beguiling beauty.