ART CITIES: Los Angeles-Olafur Eliasson
In Olafur Eliasson’s installations the visitor become aware of his senses, people around him and the world beyond. Some artworks introduce natural phenomena such as rainbows to the gallery space. Others use reflections and shadows to play with the way we perceive and interact with the world. Many works result from the artist’s research into complex geometry, motion patterns, and his interest in color theory.
By Efi Michalarou
Photo: MOCA Archive
Continuing Olafur Eliasson’s career-long exploration of light and color, geometry, and environmental awareness, “Olafur Eliasson: OPEN” presents a series of site-specific installations responding to MOCA Geffen’s building and the atmospheric conditions of Los Angeles. The exhibition features over a dozen works commissioned for MOCA, along with a selection of recent works organized around the artist’s research on perception, optical devices, physics and natural phenomena, navigational instruments, and color experimentation. Eliasson draws attention to the relativity of our perception and challenges habitual ways of seeing and experiencing the world. The exhibition is informed by the artist’s belief in the potential of inconclusiveness—the idea that every artwork contains an aspect that is radically open. In this ambitious project, Eliasson taps into the legacies of artists intimately tied to Los Angeles and MOCA’s rich history of experimentation and innovation. From Michael Asher’s site-specific interventions, to Maria Nordman’s exploration of space and time, to Robert Irwin’s perceptual experiments with light and space and James Turrell’s pioneering work in the use of light as a medium.” The exhibition conceived as a number of fluid experiences staged in the vast industrial spaces of The Geffen Contemporary. The exhibition’s central gallery becomes a point of departure and return, welcoming visitors to meander throughout the museum as they interact with various optical devices that refract and reframe the building and its environments. In the main gallery are centered a handful of observation towers, tapering up toward the ceiling, under which visitors are invited to glance skyward. What they’ll see are the artist’s signature kaleidoscopic sights, formed by light and mirrors, that conjure his speculative futures (a yellow-tinged solar future circulating with plastic garbage bags, say). Other towers offer glimpses out the museum’s skylights, reflected by mirrors and LED strips, which allow the works to shift with the weather and time of day. In another gallery stands a pair of nondescript triangular devices. But peer into their apertures and you’ll find complex spheres containing myriad other geometric forms, created once again with colored lights and mirrors. It’s a technique the artist has perfected over more than two decades. Even as you discover the optical trick, the kaleidoscopic effects still wow the eye. A colorful sculpture of a rhombic triacontahedron hangs nearby, seemingly bringing those prismatic illusions into reality—its combination of polarizing filters and plastic amplifying the mind-boggling interaction between light and shapes. The work bears the apt title, “Your changing atmosphere”. The museum’s environs also fuel another work: “Weather-drawing observatory for the future” (2024), a giant drawing machine, its stylus equipped with ink, that creates marks based on meteorological data. A new drawing is created each day, its patterns determined by factors including temperature and solar radiation. When I visited, the machine had already produced a wonderfully detailed radial composition based on the day’s balmy weather. Typical of Eliasson’s productions, the throughline of audience engagement runs through his new pieces. “Weather-drawing”, is the bulk of his latest commissions invite visitors to interact with them, to see through their lenses, and to play.
Photo: Olafur Eliasson, Installation view “Olafur Eliasson: OPEN”, MOCA Geffen – Los Angeles, 2024, Courtesy of the artist; Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York/Los Angeles; neugerriemschneider, Berlin © 2024 Olafur Eliasson
Info: Curators: José Luis Blondet & Rebecca Lowery, Assistan Curators: Emilia Nicholson-Fajardo & Anastasia Kahn, MOCA (Museum Of Contemporary Art), Geffen Contemporary, 152 North Central Avenue, Los Angeles, CA, USA, Duration: 15/9/2024-6/7/2025, Days & Hours: Thu-Fri 11:00-17:00, Sat-Sun 11:00-18:00, www.moca.org/
