Jepp Hein
Foyer der R+V Versicherungen | permanent installation
Wiesbaden (DE), 2018

How do five brightly colored balloons get into the foyer of an insurance company? «Five Smiles For You» is part of a work of art that the internationally acclaimed artist Jeppe Hein has installed in the entrance area of ​​R+V in Wiesbaden. The project was accompanied by Häusler Contemporary.

The artist, who lives in Berlin, immediately convinced R+V in the course of a competition for the artistic design of the R+V foyer: «Jeppe Hein wants to stimulate people to communicate with his art. We are happy when our employees and guests talk to each other through the artworks with a smile, » says R+V boss Norbert Rollinger. «Not only transpiration is part of the job, but just as much inspiration. Art can give the economy valuable impulses and inspire us to new perspectives», Rollinger is convinced.


Bright red, blue, purple, yellow and green – the balloons made of glass fiber reinforced plastic and chrome paint seem to hover on the ceiling and reflect the astonished viewer. When a air draft passes through the room, the balloons swing as if they would want to go on and search for new paths in the building.

«Breathing Watercolors» is the title of the second work that Jeppe Hein realized in the R+V foyer. Inhale, pause, exhale: Each breath of the artist turns into a blue brushstroke. Vertical stripes painted with blue watercolor paint adorn a 13-meter-long wall directly opposite the entrance. Breathing exercises he built into his life after a burn-out in 2009 inspired Jeppe Hein to this work. Meditation and yoga influence his art: the breath became explicitly the topic of the newer works of art.

About Jeppe Hein
Born in Copenhagen in 1974, Jeppe Hein studied at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen and at the Städel Academy of Fine Arts in Frankfurt in the 1990s. The internationally acclaimed artist lives in Berlin, his exhibitions take him all over the world, including to New York, Melbourne, Tokyo or Paris.