Olafur Eliasson talks about his collaboration with Michel Bitbol at Fondation Louis Vuitton, 23 January 2015
Out now: Never known but is the knower; Lecture by Michel Bitbol, drawings by Olafur Eliasson. Published on the occasion of the exhibition Contact at Fondation Louis Vuitton
Available at Buchhandlung Walther König
Detail of Guckkasten, 1994
Olafur Eliasson: Boros Collection 1994 - 2015 at the Langen Foundation, opens Saturday 18 April
Drawing is a dance of the hand. Sketches for Contact
Drawing is movement.
When I look at a drawing, I draw along with it. I trace the lines along with the person who originally made the marks. Invisibly, on the inside. The trace – on paper or in physical or virtual space – is transformed into felt presence and my response charts out a faint psychogram, my physical self. I/body – a resonator and emotional agent in one. My interior drawing is as real as any mark on paper, canvas, in stone.
To look at a drawing is to feel time, experience duration. A dialogue beyond temporal and spatial boundaries begins.
Drawing is touching the world.
Olafur Eliasson
Featured video: rediscovered film material of Vortex for Lofoten, 1999
On view as part of the exhibition opening on Saturday at the Langen Foundation
Now: Raum für Bildung und Bilder by Olafur Eliasson, responding to Kirsten Winderlich's concept of the Bilderbuchwerkstatt at grund_schule der künste, Berlin. Photo: Nick Ash
Excerpt from Jacques Derrida ‘White Mythology’, in Margins of Philosophy
Each time that there is a metaphor, there is doubtless a sun somewhere; but each time there is sun, metaphor has begun. If the sun is metaphorical always, already, it is no longer completely natural. It is always, already, a luster, a chandelier, one might say an artificial construction, if one could still give credence to this signification when nature has disappeared. For if the sun is no longer completely natural, what in nature does remain natural?
Jacques Derrida, ‘White Mythology’
World illuminator on the rooftop of Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris
As part of Olafur Eliasson’s exhibition Contact, the sun tracker has been installed on the exterior of the Fondation Louis Vuitton. The work directs sunlight to an intermediary mirror and through a skylight, thus illuminating the artist’s geometrical sculpture Dust particle.The sun tracker redirects sunlight onto a fixed point by adjusting a mirror in concert with the ‘movement’ of the sun across the sky. The apparatus belongs to a family of optical devices known formally as heliostats – a word deriving from Greek roots that mean stationary sun.
To track the sun is to track yourself. The sun tracker locates the centre of your orbital ellipse, giving your position right now and rendering visible your path. The reflexive potential lies in understanding that the sun does not rise or set; it is we who are the mirrors, who are circulating, tracking, spinning in our Keplerian ellipses. I want to encourage seeing yourself in a non-egoistic way. You and I are not the centre of the universe, but in fact spinning in altruistic space.
Olafur Eliasson
Now: Last chance to see Turner colour experiments at Tate Britain, London
On view until Sunday 25 January
From representation to presence: Roundtable discussion between Olafur Eliasson, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Laurence Bosse, Michel Bitbol, and Claire Denis at Fondation Louis Vuitton
Poetry recital by Cia Rinne
Now: Space minding at STEVENSON, Cape Town
On view until 28 February 2015
Feature: Embracing space
test
Feature: Cyanometer colour experiments
Feature: Never Tired of Looking at Each Other - Only the Mountain and I, 2012
From the archive: Four handgardens
Feature: Organic light sphere, 2010
Feature: Spherical thinking
Lioning
