ART CITIES:Munich-Olafur Eliasson
Olafur Eliasson is one of the most representative and influential artists working today. He is known for sculptures and large-scale installations employing elemental materials such as light, water, and air temperature to enhance the viewer’s experience. 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: Staatliche Graphische Sammlung München Archive
A key element of his work is drawing, that help Eliasson to formulate his initial ideas, and he repeatedly consults them in the course of realizing projects. Indeed, one has the sense that the artist thinks in drawing. It is therefore surprising that his graphic oeuvre has, to date, only occasionally been presented in exhibitions. With fifty drawings, sculpture and installations, the exhibition “WATERcolours” at the Staatliche Graphische Sammlung München (SGSM) presents Eliasson’s graphic work in all its facets,. The curatorial concept is to reveal the close connection between his graphic art and his installations. Eliasson has also created a new, site-specific installation for the vitrines in the SGSM entrance area. This work addresses the subject of the viewer’s gaze and perception in public spaces while also treating the relationship between surfaces and what lies behind them. Along with a new work in glass “Oceanic atmosphere” (2018) and the sculpture “The presence of absence (Nuup Kangerlua, 24 September 2015 #2)” (2016), the large-format watercolor “The ocean fade” (2016) is shown. The works in this series each use the repeated application of thin, transparent washes onto a single large sheet of paper to produce a subtle chromatic progression from brilliant and saturated tones to pale and delicate ones. The installations “Your uncertain shadow (black and white)” (2010) and “Life is lived along lines” (2009) form the transition from the theme of light and shadow to graphic linear art. The exhibition also presents a number of models created by Studio Olafur Eliasson. Together, these serve as a study room opening up into a sort of three-dimensional cognitive space. The installation of models is flanked, among other things, by a suite of large-format sketches on paper. A third group of works in the exhibition addresses the expanded concept of drawing. The light installation “Your unpredictable sameness” (2014) demonstrates that the art of the line does not obey any medial limitations and that artists like Eliasson were unhindered in their openness to experimentation. In this context, early drawings from 1998 that the artist created in collaboration with his father Elias Hjörleifsson are shown for the first time, serving as excellent examples of how Eliasson opens up the traditional concept of drawing; Eliasson asked his father, who was based on a ship at the time, to position a ball dipped in ink on a piece of paper at predetermined points, signaling to his father when he was to start and stop the process. For periods of 2, 5, 10 or 15 seconds, respectively, the ball would roll across the sheet according to the movement of the waves. Here the drawing process thus begins with the creative hand and is expanded through chance, which permits artistic creativity, like a seismograph, to access a virtually interstellar space.
Info: Pinakothek der Moderne, Staatliche Graphische Sammlung München, Barer Straße 40, Munich, Duration: 7/6-2/9/18, Days & Hours: Tue-Wed & Fri-sun 10:00-18:00, Thu 10:00-29:00, www.pinakothek.de
