Jeppe Hein @ 303 Gallery

Jeppe Hein

303 GALLERY
525 West 22nd Street
March 1–April 12


In a corner of Jeppe Hein’s first solo show at 303, a hole a few inches off the floor spews a screw each time someone triggers a nearby sensor. Elsewhere, a white plastic cube less than one inch high spins on a tiny turntable; strobe lighting makes it look like three white cubes. Hanging above the gallery attendant’s desk, a piece titled Almost Nothing, 2008, consists of a foot-wide sphere of glass that contains a feather bobbing in the currents of a little fan. Clearly, modesty is a central conceit of this work. What, Hein seems to ask, is the minimum it takes to hold a viewer’s interest in an age when a Richard Tuttle piece of wire already does the job so well? The answer, of course, is almost nothing: Hein’s works, for all the small scale of their effects, are surprisingly engrossing.

Technology has something to do with it. We’re so acutely attuned to the power of machines that even when they’re used to achieve so very little—especially when they’re used that way—it’s hard to pull away. The tick of Hein’s falling screws recalls the millions of mouse clicks we’ve heard; his Multiplied Cube, 2008, is all of industrial society’s wasted energy and effort, writ small. Other similar works—Tom Friedman’s tiny speck of his own shit comes to mind—rely on a compressed absurdity to do their job. Their modest means are meant to be at odds with their emotional ambition. Tuttle-like, Hein’s modesty is modest through and through.

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