JEPPE HEIN
EYE OF THE NORTH
LANGÅSEN NATUR- OG SKULPTURPARK, SVOLVÆR, NORWAY
PERMANENT INSTALLATION SINCE 2020
Imagine if you could see the world with different eyes... divided into innumerable individual parts and put together anew; nature, sky, and earth surrounding you, enlarging your angle of vision or centering on the essential; you looking at it from a distance or standing in the center, where the light falls into the eye and the vastness stretches out before you... it would offer you unseen perspectives and allow you to perceive what surrounds you in new ways.
THE EYE OF THE NORTH is an eight-meter-high and five-meter-wide mirror installation located in Lofoten, Norway. Standing on a small hill, the installation is visible from afar and allows visitors to look into the landscape. The elliptically shaped sculpture, with a concave vaulted front and a convex vaulted back, has a round opening in the middle with a diameter of 1.5 meters that can be reached via a small stair. The vertices on the surface are derived from a projection of a star map inspired by the night sky above the Lofoten. The celestial projection of the northern hemisphere is used for the structure of the concave surface, and the southern hemisphere for the convex side. By walking up the curved stairs on the convex side to rest on the platform inside the sculpture, the visitor becomes the center of the art piece and metaphorically speaking the center of the universe. It is the place where the visitor doesn’t see the sculpture anymore, but where she or he gets a subliminal view of the world around. For a short moment, detached from the ground and changed perspective. With this, the focus shifts from the sculpture to the person interacting with it. The sculpture emphasizes the interconnectedness of that particular person’s life with all other life and all the stars of the universe. It is all one.
THE EYE OF THE NORTH, 2020
High-polished stainless steel, substructure
8,00 x 5,00 x 1,70 m
© Courtesy KÖNIG GALERIE, Berlin, 303 Gallery, New York and Galleri Nicolai Wallner, Copenhagen
© Images Kjell Ove Storvik, Odd-Petter Tanke Jensen
PERMANENT INSTALLATION SINCE 2020
Imagine if you could see the world with different eyes... divided into innumerable individual parts and put together anew; nature, sky, and earth surrounding you, enlarging your angle of vision or centering on the essential; you looking at it from a distance or standing in the center, where the light falls into the eye and the vastness stretches out before you... it would offer you unseen perspectives and allow you to perceive what surrounds you in new ways.THE EYE OF THE NORTH is an eight-meter-high and five-meter-wide mirror installation located in Lofoten, Norway. Standing on a small hill, the installation is visible from afar and allows visitors to look into the landscape. The elliptically shaped sculpture, with a concave vaulted front and a convex vaulted back, has a round opening in the middle with a diameter of 1.5 meters that can be reached via a small stair. The vertices on the surface are derived from a projection of a star map inspired by the night sky above the Lofoten. The celestial projection of the northern hemisphere is used for the structure of the concave surface, and the southern hemisphere for the convex side. By walking up the curved stairs on the convex side to rest on the platform inside the sculpture, the visitor becomes the center of the art piece and metaphorically speaking the center of the universe. It is the place where the visitor doesn’t see the sculpture anymore, but where she or he gets a subliminal view of the world around. For a short moment, detached from the ground and changed perspective. With this, the focus shifts from the sculpture to the person interacting with it. The sculpture emphasizes the interconnectedness of that particular person’s life with all other life and all the stars of the universe. It is all one.THE EYE OF THE NORTH, 2020High-polished stainless steel, substructure
8,00 x 5,00 x 1,70 m
© Courtesy KÖNIG GALERIE, Berlin, 303 Gallery, New York and Galleri Nicolai Wallner, Copenhagen
© Images Kjell Ove Storvik, Odd-Petter Tanke Jensen