More than Human
Group Exhibition
Light Art Museum, Budapest
Through July 26, 2026

Rain falling upwards, electric paramecia and xenobots: the Light Art Museum’s fourth exhibition More Than Human has opened. Featuring nearly forty works, the exhibition presents spectacular installations, projections and immersive creations by world-renowned artists. It takes us into realms that provoke thought and, fundamentally challenging our anthropocentric worldview, offer inspiring alternative perspectives ranging from the beginnings of evolution to speculations about the future, from the molecular to interplanetary scales.

After Fire
Group Exhibition
Aranya Art Center, Beidaihe, China
Through September 6, 2026

Aranya Art Center is pleased to announce the group exhibition After Fire, presenting nearly 100 fire-making tools spanning several centuries from the collection of Tian Jiaqing, in conversation with artworks by 14 contemporary artists of various cultural backgrounds. This marks Aranya Art Center’s first foray into drawing historical collections into the curatorial context of contemporary art. Through five thematic chapters and archival displays, the exhibition traces the trajectory of humanity’s mastery over fire, exploring the complex and contradictory relationship between this force of nature and human civilization.

Otto Piene
February 12–April 5, 2025
Berlin

The late Otto Piene, a founding member of the influential postwar art collective ZERO, consistently explored evolving notions of the material and immaterial in his work. Monika Sprüth and Philomene Magers are pleased to present a solo exhibition at the Berlin gallery that showcases a selection of Piene’s Fire Paintings alongside his final ceramic works. Both bodies of work explore the element of fire and its creative potential, which the artist began experimenting with as early as 1959 and continued throughout his entire career.

Otto Piene
The Proliferation of the Sun
May 24–August 10, 2024
Los Angeles

Otto Piene (1928–2014), cofounder of the ZERO group and longtime director of MIT’s influential Center for Advanced Visual Studies, combined art and technology in works that comprised light rooms, inflatable sculptures, ceramics, drawings, paintings and performances. Colorful and dynamic, they consistently engage the viewer’s perception and participation. Monika Sprüth and Philomene Magers are pleased to present Piene’s monumental, immersive installation The Proliferation of the Sun (1967/2014) at the Los Angeles gallery, marking the artist’s first solo presentation on the West Coast. Featuring seven digital projections of hand-painted slides and a soundtrack of the artist’s voice directing them, the work envelops visitors and the gallery in shifting prismatic tones that generate, in Piene’s words, a “poetic journey through space.”

Mies in Mind
John Bock, Thomas Demand, Thea Djordjadze, Jenny Holzer, Kraftwerk, Reinhard Mucha, Otto Piene, Thomas Ruff, Thomas Scheibitz
August 20–September 4, 2021
Berlin

As part of the exhibition parcours Mies In Mind, initiated by INDEX Berlin and taking place on the occasion of the reopening of the Neue Nationalgalerie, Sprüth Magers is showcasing works by John Bock, Thomas Demand, Thea Djordjadze, Jenny Holzer, Reinhard Mucha, Otto Piene, Thomas Ruff and Thomas Scheibitz in a group exhibition that pays tribute to the architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and his famous building.

Air Time
Charlotte Moorman, Nam June Paik, Otto Piene
August 12–September 30, 2021

Otto Piene was an artistic pioneer, from his years as co-founder of the Zero group in Düsseldorf to his massive environmental installations across the United States and Europe. This exhibition explores his Sky Art projects in particular, illuminating their experimental, participatory and collaborative nature. This phase of his work flourished to a large degree through the opportunities and connections he made at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)—with artists such as Nam June Paik, Charlotte Moorman and Elizabeth Goldring—where he was a fellow (1968–74) and later director (1974–94) of the Center for Advanced Visual Studies (CAVS). Some of Piene's most spectacular Sky Art performances were realized in collaboration with fellow artist and life-long friend Charlotte Moorman, who holds a special place in this exhibition.

Otto Piene
February 1–April 6, 2019
Berlin

Otto Piene counts among the pioneers of 20th century art. As co-founder of the international ZERO movement, he had a fundamental impact on how classical art forms such as painting and sculpture are perceived. His early smoke, grid and fire paintings, light ballets and light rooms enabled him to incorporate time, light, space and movement into the production of art.

Otto Piene
Light Ballet
April 29–June 10, 2017
Berlin

Otto Piene’s use of light developed in the late 1950s with works utilising earlier experiments of printing onto canvas using punctured screens of many small holes, producing a grid of small, elevated pigment dots on the surface. These perforated ‘raster sieves’ were used in early works as hand-held tools through which to shine light from candles. This rudimentary apparatus soon developed into more complex means in 1960-61, employing metal screens, discs, motors, timers, and rotating electric lights, coming to a theatrical climax in room size installations. A selection of these elements will be presented in Sprüth Magers collaboration with the Otto Piene Estate, his first exhibition with the gallery, taking the form of a ‘Light Ballet’.