Bubble Vision

Danish artist Jeppe Hein's installation for champagne house Ruinart invites visitors to embrace the moment through words and drawings

- By TF Chan. Photographs by Hudson Hayden

Artist Jeppe Hein's year-long installation for champagne house Ruinart will include coloured wooden panels with empty circles (this page), which visitors will be invited to fill with their emotional state using chalk, and mirrored speech bubbles sporting maxims chosen by Hein (pictured opposite with one in his Berlin studio)

The art fair can be an overwhelming place. The pace is often too frenetic, the architecture too clinical, the camera flashes too frequent, and the crowd too mercenary to allow for proper contemplation of the works on view. ‘Everything is about buying, selling and consuming rapidly, says Jeppe Hein. The Berlin-based Danish artist has reasons to be sceptical about the format: following a burnout in 2009, when he was 35, he slowed down his life and shifted his practice to champion the virtues of mindfulness. Diverse though Hein's output may be spanning outdoor mirror labyrinths, shiny, colourful balloons that hang from ceilings, museum benches in surreptitious motion, and the global art action 'Breathe with Me' (which invites participants to record their breaths as ultramarine downward brushstrokes on a common canvas) - it all emphasises the importance of embracing the moment.

This makes Hein's carte blanche commission from champagne house Ruinart to create installations for a year's worth of art fairs and industry events both surprising and fitting. Surprising, because it's hard to foster mindfulness amid an embarrassment of riches, but fitting, as few artists are better qualified to take on such a challenge. Titled 'Right Here, Right Now', this is not so much a solo show as a collaborative art project, inviting participants to engage with their senses and tap into their latent creativity.

coloured wooden panels and a mirrored speech bubble, featuring one of seven different maxims from the installation, in Hein's studio