ART-PRESENTATION: Olafur Eliasson-In Real Life
Moving seamlessly from his early photographs to sculpture, immersive environments, large-scale public interventions, and architectural projects, Olafur Eliasson uses simple natural elements (light, color, water, and movement) to alter viewers’ sensory perceptions. . His works reflect on nature and also demonstrate a lively, interested engagement in daily experience, he possesses an astonishing ability to activate space.
By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Tate Archive
After his installation “The weather project” (2003) at Tate Modern;s Turbine Hall, Olafur Eliasson presents his first major survey in the UK, “In real life”, showing together over 30 works spanning the last three decades – from celebrated early installations like “Beauty” (1993), to new paintings and sculptures. For the first time, the exhibition will also examine his wider collaborations in fields as diverse as sustainability, migration, education and architecture, allowing viewers to explore how these projects extend his artistic practice. Each installation, or group of works, will encompass a key theme explored within Eliasson’s career. This includes his early investigations into space, motion and natural phenomena – as explored in “Moss wall” (1994) featuring lichen native to Eliasson’s homeland Iceland – to extensive experiments with light, colour, geometry, perception and participation that characterise his work today – such as “Stardust particle” (2016). Other installations like “Your spiral view” (2002), an approximately eight-metre-long tunnel constructed from steel plates that are assembled into two sets of spirals coiling in opposite directions. Inside the work, visitors find themselves within a kaleidoscope, in which the space they have just left is reflected fragmentarily together with the view out the other side. The reflections enhance the dizzying sense of movement created by the jagged walls. In “Your uncertain shadow (colour)” (2010), 5 colored spotlights, directed at a white wall, are arranged in a line on the floor: a green light positioned next to another green light, followed by a magenta light, an orange light, and, finally, a blue light. These colors combine to illuminate the wall with a bright white light. When the visitor enters the space, her projected shadow, by blocking each colored light from a slightly different angle, appears on the wall as an array of five differently coloured silhouettes. Together these they reflect the artist’s core principle of “seeing yourself sensing”. As the works reveal the mechanisms behind their own making, we are invited to consider the physical and psychological processes that contribute to how we experience them. The exhibition culminates with a space exploring Eliasson’s deep engagement with social and environmental issues. This includes projects such as “Little Sun” first launched at Tate Modern in 2012, which provides solar-powered lamps and chargers to communities without access to electricity; “Green Light – An Artistic Workshop”, hosted by various institutions around the world, in which asylum seekers and refugees, together with members of the public, construct Green light lamps and take part in an accompanying educational programme; and “Ice Watch” an installation featuring glacial ice from Greenland which aims to inspire public action against climate change. Eliasson’s wide-ranging architectural projects will be explored here, including the recently completed Fjordenhus in Denmark. Eliasson’s work is extending onto the terrace outside Tate Modern, while further installations such as “Room for one colour” (1997). Studio Olafur Eliasson will also collaborate with Tate Eats on a special menu for Tate Modern’s Terrace Bar. This will be based on organic, vegetarian and ethically sourced produce that is central to the Studio’s own kitchen in Berlin, where studio members eat family-style meals together every day.
Info: Curators: Mark Godfrey and Emma Lewis, Assistant Curator, Tate Modern, Bankside, London, Duration: 11/7/19-5/1/20, Days & Hours: Mon-Thu & Sun 10:00-18:00, Fri-Sat 11:00-22:00, www.tate.org.uk
