Bound together by our need to navigate: we're all a bit lost, we're all on the way
Now: Turner colour experiments on view at Tate Britain
"I have always been interested in the idea that abstraction can be welcoming; Turner’s palette, which he formulated according to the hues of the natural world, is very recognisable. I was keen to explore this type of abstract matter, which, at the same time, feels familiar. It seemed like a natural step to begin an experimental study by abstracting the prismatic colours of Turner’s palette and filtering them into a new, utopian colour theory. It is within our sense of abstraction that we are able to re-evaluate our sense of presence."
Olafur Eliasson on J. M. W. Turner
Now: No nights in summer, no days in winter, 1994, at the Gwangju Biennale
On view until 9 November
View from the studio: Turner colour experiments in progress
Active memory: from the burning archive
Preview of Contact is content, 2014, on view as part of Riverbed at Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Denmark
Your uncertain archive!: drift, explore, connect – embrace uncertainty
"I wanted the chance to allow for a higher degree of negotiability, and also that little bit of discomfort in being slightly lost sometimes. Not too lost but lost in the sense of having to work a little harder to find your path.... We're so used to commodified home pages, everything is about predictability, in order to make people feel safe."
Olafur Eliasson on Your uncertain archive.
Movement microscope, 2011, on view as part of Riverbed, at Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Denmark
Movement microscope, a film by Olafur Eliasson, depicts a normal day at Studio Olafur Eliasson, with one major difference: Eliasson invited 'movement specialists' (street performers, mimes, dancers) to come perform a kind of spatio-temporal intervention throughout the studio during the work day.
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Movement microscope is now on view as part of Riverbed, at Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Denmark, until 4 January, 2015.
Watch the film online here:
View from the studio
View of Know-how kaleidoscopes, 2014, Kabelparken, Copenhagen
Video: Bo Tengberg
Now: Know-how kaleidoscopes, 2014, Kabelparken, Copenhagen
Now: Gravity stairs, 2014, on view at Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art, Seoul, South Korea until 28 December
How does it feel to keep balance?
How does it feel to lose it?
Model room, 2003, now on view at Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Denmark
Ping-pong on the façade of the Harpa Reykjavik Concert Hall
Riverbed is now open at Louisiana, Museum of Modern Art, Denmark
Astrolafur: anti-gravity dance
Active memory: from the anti-gravity archive
Excerpt from: Your Gravitational Now
Originally published in David Featherstone and Joe Painter, eds.,
Spatial Politics: Essays for Doreen Massey (Chichester, 2013), pp.125–32.
Imagine standing on the vast banks of black sand just south of Vatnajökull,
the largest glacier in Iceland, looking northwards onto the tip of Skeidarárjökull,
one of its glacier tongues. From this particular point, the wide glacier takes up
a large part of the horizon, and its gravel- and ash-covered nose sprawls into an
ungraspable mass. Abstraction and impalpability pervade, filtered through your
here-and-now body. Standing right in front of the glacier, you may first begin to
feel a degree of intimacy and familiarity. The experience of proceeding onto the
glacier itself is a moment of intense physical drama. Pressurised by the mass
of ice, a sub-glacial water current causes the otherwise dry black sand right in
front of the tongue to undulate like a fatigued trampoline. Cautiously trying to
cross the few yards of billowing sandy surface to the glacier itself, you develop
a funny, anti-gravity-like gait – a bit like moon-walking. Hoping to defy physics,
you make yourself light, distribute your weight as evenly as possible, heart
pounding. Quicksand below threatens to pull you in.
‘Contact is content is a visual narrative that takes you up close and far away, that asks you to turn around, to look at the landscape anew, to look at yourself. As the material came together, content arose through contact between landscapes and artworks, bodies and weather conditions, light and relative darkness.’
Olafur Eliasson
