Otto Piene: Burned Grid: Structure, Energy, Light

 

The exhibition brings together three groups of works from different phases in the oeuvre of Otto Piene: early Grid Paintings from the late 1950s and 1960s, Fire Paintings from the 1970s, and ceramic works in which the grid reappears as a sculptural structure. 

 

The grid stands at the beginning of Otto Piene’s artistic language. In the late 1950s, as a founding member of the ZERO movement, Piene turned to the grid not as a rigid system but as a field of possibility. The early Grid Paintings  (Raster Paintings) transform repetition into vibration: light animates structure, and order becomes a carrier of energy. The grid is not merely compositional; it is a matrix through which immaterial phenomena—light, movement, atmosphere—enter the image.

 

In the works presented in the exhibition, this early structural principle re-emerges in a new material register. The ceramics revisit the logic of the grid, yet they translate it into relief, surface, and physical presence. What was once painted or punctured becomes shaped and fired. The kiln replaces the studio gesture; combustion becomes a collaborator. The grid is no longer only seen—it is touched, shadowed, and materially inscribed. In this transformation, structure acquires density without losing its openness.

 

This return is not nostalgic. Rather, it reveals the continuity of Piene’s thinking: structure as a vessel for energy. The Fire Paintings of the 1970s extend this trajectory. Here, flame leaves its trace directly on the surface, marking the work with smoke and heat. The controlled order of the grid encounters the unpredictable movement of fire. Yet even in these works, the principle remains consistent: light and energy are not illustrated but enacted.

 

Across decades and media, Piene maintains a dialogue between system and element, order and combustion. The grid provides orientation; fire introduces contingency. In the ceramics, these poles converge. The works embody a synthesis of early structural rigor and later elemental force, uniting surface and process, control and transformation.

 

Burned Grid thus brings into focus a continuous thread within Piene’s oeuvre: the grid as origin, the flame as activation, and light as the enduring medium that binds them.