André Heller
André Heller created two attractions for Luna Luna: The Dream Station, an inflatable structure that housed a cafe, and a Wedding Chapel installation where guests could marry whomever or whatever they wanted.
Artist
André Heller
Attraction
Dream Station
Wedding Chapel
Born
1947, Austria
Heller works in diverse mediums, including installation, theater, and sculpture
He began planning Luna Luna in the 1970s
Luna Luna continues his interest in creating fun and entertaining experiences for the masses
André Heller was a major Austrian pop star in the 1970s, releasing a dozen hit albums, several books, and avant-garde films. Driven by his wide-ranging curiosity and a desire to traverse artistic mediums, he turned to making art and artistic spectacles: circuses, parades, variety shows, fireworks displays, and poetic gardens—often involving audiences of millions.
Alongside being Luna Luna’s visionary and spokesperson, he embraced a wide range of mediums—film, installation, music, theater, sculpture, and writing, each emphasizing celebration, absurdity, and pleasure, often with a political purpose of claiming public space for collective joy. A recent collaborative project, World State Machine, dispenses information about climate change, while his installation Heroes of Peace incorporates holograms of individuals aligned against war, including John Lennon and Nelson Mandela.
Heller imagined Luna Luna as a “total artwork” that combined visual art, music, theater, design, circus arts, and performance, and explained that the park aimed to recover public space for art and imagination. Opposed to doing so with public money—he saw government power and control as compromising—he instead partnered with the German magazine Neue Revue. While his influence was felt throughout the park, he contributed two features in particular. Dream Station was an inflatable, spiked balloon sculpture derived from one of his Sky Signs (1986–90) and served as a café. Wedding Chapel comprised a stage flanked by large scale caricatures of a bride and groom, in which visitors could “marry” whatever or whomever they wished—an open invitation that allowed for same-sex couples to marry, a political act in the 1980s. Heller also created carnival cutouts of celebrities that visitors could pose with for pictures.
The purpose of Luna Luna was to use art and imagination to survive and fight back against an endangered world.
Forgotten Fantasy
Thirty-six years ago, Luna Luna landed in Hamburg, Germany: the world’s first art amusement park with rides, games, and attractions by visionaries like Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring, and David Hockney. By a twist of fate, the park’s treasures were soon sealed in 44 shipping containers and forgotten in Texas—until now.