Jeppe Hein's works address us individually; though, importantly, we might not have asked them to. Hein delights in apparently serendipitous events, suspending common sense laws of cause and effect and conjuring up scenarios in which, in direct response to our presence, seemingly sentient behaviour is coaxed from inanimate things.In some of his pieces he articulates a dialogue between the work itself, the person encountering it and the gallery space in which it is sited ? though this is a conversation for which one is wholly unprepared. Works of this kind imply a wry relationship both to the Minimalist sculpture of the 1960s and to those forms of institutional critique that sought to question the authority of the museum or gallery space. Yet Hein's practice does not really fit either tradition ? the mode of address and playful tone is at odds with, for example, phenomenological interpretations of Minimalist sculpture, in which the viewer participated in the work but as a relatively abstract presence. For Hein that viewer becomes a very literal participant who, consciously or otherwise, acts as a trigger for the work.



Jeppe Hein's sculpture and installations explore the relationship between viewer and artwork. Using the minimalist aesthetic of the archetypical cube, Hein's Shaking Cube is both sculpture and mechanical object. Framed by an invisible field of motion sensors, the work is impelled by the movements of the viewer. Using sculpture as an expanded field of social interaction, Hein calls into question traditional perceptions and functions of art, creating a work that can only be experienced through the viewer's participation.With this exhibition I've been thinking about the gallery's situation, and how it presents and represents art. How artists can go into an exhibition space and use it to stage their art. My job has been to find out how I, with the room as frame, can make my work function best, while maintaining a relationship with the room itself. I chose to take my sketches along because they communicate the reduction process that led to the exhibition.