Museum Tinguely Basel:
"Otto Piene. Wege zum Paradies"
February 7 – May 12, 2024
Otto Piene (1928−2014) aimed high with his art: to shape a more harmonious, peaceful, and sustainable world. His expansive view explored new media and projected aesthetic forms and experiences into new spatial realms.
Structured thematically, the monographic exhibition Otto Piene: Paths to Paradise traces his utopian vision as expressed in works from his most significant series and projects in conversation with his lifelong practice of sketching. Together these works reveal Piene’s use of sketching and drawing in both narrow and broad, literal and figurative senses, and provide an expanded definition in connection to a visionary practice that embraced the application of new technology.
This monographic exhibition on Otto Piene addresses the artist’s desire to shape a more harmonious, peaceful, and sustainable world according to a utopian vision that expands art beyond the bounds of traditional media and projects it into atmospheric realms. Rather than presenting his oeuvre chronologically, this exhibition offers a rereading of Piene’s art according to multi- and intermedia projects that engage recurring motifs and ideas. Thus, it bridges periods of his practice that have often been viewed as distinct, namely Zero in Düsseldorf (1957—1966) and technology-based Sky Art after his move to the United States in the 1960s.
