A daily flood of images tends to dull our senses; in a museum, we often take just a few seconds to contemplate a work of art. Olafur Eliasson attempts to counteract such perceptual desensitization. With Your exhibition guide, Eliasson encourages users to take in their environments – whether in a museum or in everyday life – in new ways. We are called upon to experience encounters with art in unfamiliar and fundamentally different ways. While a typical exhibition guide supplies viewers with information and answers to anticipated queries, Eliasson poses problems and invites visitors to trust their own senses.
In eleven brief films and an introduction, Eliasson addresses the viewer directly in his exhibition guide: How does it feel to break with habitual patterns of vision? What if the artworks weren’t art? What can be achieved by a radical shift in perspective – for example, by imagining that one is floating through the museum like an asteroid?
