Jeppe Hein

König Galerie presents Jeppe Hein with You Are Never Really Allone in the Nave of St. Agnes. Hein is known for works that place the viewer at the center of experience and use simple forms to shift the perception of space.

In this exhibition, he reworks his mirror balloon sculptures as penguins that have floated from the ceiling to the ground. Their highly polished surfaces reflect and distort the surrounding architecture and the viewer, while the balloon form shifts from abstract volume to a body oscillating between weight and lightness. The figures appear suspended in stillness, as if they have drifted into the building from another environment.

Each sculpture is named after regions associated with penguin habitats, including Chile, Argentina, Peru, South Africa, Namibia, Australia, New Zealand, and the Galápagos Islands. The names are drawn from Indigenous languages and refer to ideas of care, guidance, nature, and presence.

Each figure is placed on a pale stone collected by the artist along the Danish coast. Together, they suggest a moment of pause, as if the penguins have come to rest and are quietly observing their surroundings, inviting the same attention from the viewer.

The spelling Allone combines 'all' and 'one' and suggests that individuality and collectivity exist at the same time. It points to a shared condition of presence in which human and non-human forms of life are continuously reflected in one another.

The mirror surfaces ensure that perception is never fixed. Everything shifts with the viewer's position. The body and the surrounding space are reflected back into the work, and movement becomes part of the experience. Small changes in perspective continuously reconfigure the relationship between viewer, sculpture, and environment, opening a more connected way of seeing the natural world.