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Viewing machine for imagining oceanic futures, 2024 - The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA, Los Angeles, California – 2024 - Photo: Zak Kelley
Viewing machine for imagining oceanic futures, 2024
The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA, Los Angeles, California – 2024
Photo: Zak Kelley
Viewing machine for imagining oceanic futures, 2024 - The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA, Los Angeles, California – 2024 - Photo: Studio Olafur Eliasson
Viewing machine for imagining oceanic futures, 2024
The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA, Los Angeles, California – 2024
Photo: Studio Olafur Eliasson
Viewing machine for imagining oceanic futures, 2024 - The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA, Los Angeles, California – 2024 - Photo: Zak Kelley
Viewing machine for imagining oceanic futures, 2024
The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA, Los Angeles, California – 2024
Photo: Zak Kelley
Viewing machine for imagining oceanic futures, 2024 - The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA, Los Angeles, California – 2024 - Photo: Zak Kelley
Viewing machine for imagining oceanic futures, 2024
The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA, Los Angeles, California – 2024
Photo: Zak Kelley
Viewing machine for imagining oceanic futures
'Viewing machine for imagining oceanic futures', 2024 is part of a series of installations within the exhibition 'Olafur Eliasson: OPEN' responding to MOCA Geffen’s building and the atmospheric conditions of Los Angeles. Eliasson draws attention to the relativity of our perception and challenges habitual ways of seeing and experiencing the world. The work feels like something built for the space programme. Positioned directly beneath a skylight, this enormous kaleidoscope is the only one in the gallery with walls that do not taper up to the top. The resulting reflections appear to extend to infinity, an effect that is magnified by strips of LEDs that echo the grid of the skylight. An immense vat of water at the top periodically tilts back and forth to unleash waves that cascade slowly from one end to the other and are reflected rhythmically as they trouble the grid of the skylight and LEDS and the sky above. Standing beneath this massive opening, the viewer has the sense of being underwater, of gazing into an impossible, inaccessible space above.

Video by SHIMURAbros
Music by mamoru
Watch on soe.tv ⤶
The video features five new installations as part of 'Olafur Eliasson: OPEN', the first major solo exhibition of Olafur in Los Angeles. OPEN is part of the landmark Getty initiative 'PST ART: Art & Science Collide'. Continuing Olafur’s career-long exploration of light and colour, geometry, and environmental awareness, the exhibition presents over a dozen works commissioned for MOCA, amongst these site-specific installations responding to MOCA Geffen’s building and the atmospheric conditions of Los Angeles. Olafur 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.

Video by SHIMURAbros
Music by mamoru
Watch on soe.tv ⤶
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Viewing machine for imagining oceanic futures, 2024

Positioned directly beneath a skylight, this enormous kaleidoscope is the only one in the gallery with walls that do not taper up to the top. The resulting reflections appear to extend to infinity, an effect that is magnified by strips of LEDs that echo the grid of the skylight. An immense vat of water at the top periodically tilts back and forth to unleash waves that cascade slowly from one end to the other and are reflected rhythmically as they trouble the grid of the skylight and LEDS and the sky above. Standing beneath this massive opening, the viewer has the sense of being underwater, of gazing into an impossible, inaccessible space above.

Artwork details

Title

Viewing machine for imagining oceanic futures

Year

2024

Materials

Stainless steel, aluminium, mirror foil, acrylic basin, water, LED lights, motor