Otto Piene (b. 1928)
Artist's Resale Right ("Droit de Suite"). Artist's… Read more
Otto Piene (b. 1928)

Lichtballet

Details
Otto Piene (b. 1928)
Lichtballet
four lights on a rotating device with an electrical motor in a box of perforated steel
50 x 50 x 50 cm.
Executed circa 1955-1960
Special Notice
Artist's Resale Right ("Droit de Suite"). Artist's Resale Right Regulations 2006 apply to this lot, the buyer agrees to pay us an amount equal to the resale royalty provided for in those Regulations, and we undertake to the buyer to pay such amount to the artist's collection agent.

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Lot Essay

'Light is the primeval condition of every visibility... Light creates the power and the magic of painting, its richness, its eloquence, its sensuality and its beauty.' (Otto Piene cited in A. Glibota, 'Otto Piene or a rainbow in the sky', in: A. Glibota, Otto Piene, Villorba 2011, p.36 referring to A. Glibota, The Conversation: Otto Piene, Paris Art Center, 23 February 1992)
Piene's engagements with the themes of light, movement, and space are distinguished by their experimental and multi-media character.
'My endeavor is twofold: to demonstrate that light is a source of life which has to be constantly rediscovered, and to show expansion as a phenomenal event. Everything is striving for a larger space. We want to reach the sky. We want to exhibit in the sky, not in order to establish there a new art world, but rather to enter new space peacefully - that is, freely, playfully and actively, not as slaves if war technology.' (From the exhibition catalogue for Piene - Light Ballet, Howard Wise Gallery, New York, 4-20 November 1965.)
'The flood of light of the rotating search lights - caught in the interior of the case, the cube of steel - pushes, swells, streams to the exterior space through the stenciled light code. The rudimentary construction of the projector in the cube generates and feeds the imaging processes which automatically ignite into orbits. Coded moving pictures travel along their tracks into the dark space. An infinite number of ways to see.' (Dieter Jung, cited in 'One Cubic Meter of Light' in Otto Piene, by A. Glibota, Villorba 2011, p. 519.)

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