‘Life’ doesn’t go to sleep at night.

‘Neurobiologist Anna Wirz-Justice has done incredible research into the science of biological time, of our daily rhythms – the so-called circadian rhythms – and into how these rhythms govern human behaviour and physiology. But they also impact most other living organisms – from the smallest bacteria, fungi, and plants to flies and fish and mammals – as they have all internalised these external, geophysical rhythms and have a remarkably similar set of “clock genes” that generate an internal cycle of about twenty-four hours.’ – Olafur Eliasson

Life, 2021 - Fondation Beyeler – 2021 - Photo: Pati Grabowicz

‘Life’ at Fondation Beyeler, Basel. Photo: Patricia Grabowicz

‘“Life” presents a model for a future landscape. It is hospitable. When Sam Keller, the Director of the Fondation Beyeler, and I first discussed the exhibition a couple of years ago, I thought, “Why don’t we invite everyone to the show? Let’s invite the planet – plants and various species.” Beyond just opening a door, I decided to remove the structural boundaries that keep the outside out of the institution, and I am grateful to the Fondation Beyeler and to the architect Renzo Piano, who built the museum, for trusting me to carefully – and caringly – have the glass facade removed from the building. Together with the museum, I am giving up control over the artwork, so to speak, handing it over to human and non-human visitors, to plants, microorganisms, the weather, the climate – many of these elements that museums usually work very hard to keep out. Instead, we are trying to welcome everyone and everything in.’ – Olafur Eliasson

Image used on Blog post '1926' (from S3)

‘Life’ at Fondation Beyeler, Basel. In collaboration with VOGT Case Studio. Photo: Patricia Grabowicz

‘Ever since I began practising as an artist in the early 1990s, I have been interested in perception and in the cognitive and cultural conditions that shape it. “Life” comes to life through your active encounter with it, through your perception. I’ve chosen not to offer a didactic or explanatory text to accompany the artwork, as this might shape visitors’ perceptions and understandings of the exhibition. It’s important to me not to share a finite perspective on “Life”. At the same time, I welcome what visitors bring with them to the artwork, their expectations and memories, thoughts and emotions.’ – Olafur Eliasson

Image used on Blog post '1924' (from S3)

Olafur Eliasson’s exhibition ‘Life’ is in continuous transformation, and anyone visiting the park surrounding the Fondation Beyeler in Basel can see the artwork as it develops. The exhibition has slowly started to emerge and will fade away in July. In this way, the construction and deconstruction of ‘Life’ become integral parts of the artwork. In collaboration with VOGT Case Studio. Photo: Patricia Grabowicz

Edgy but perfect kinship sphere, 2020 - Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York – 2021 - Photo: Tom Powel Imaging

‘Edgy but perfect kinship sphere’, an artwork in Olafur’s solo exhibition ‘Your ocular relief’ at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery in New York. On view through 24 April. Photo: Tom Powel Imaging

Image used on Blog post '1922' (from S3)

Installation view of Olafur’s current solo exhibition ‘Your ocular relief’, now on view at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery in New York. Photo: Tom Powel Imaging

Your ocular relief, 2021

‘Your ocular relief’, 2021 – the central artwork of Olafur Eliasson's current solo exhibition ‘Your ocular relief’, at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery in New York. On view through 24 April 2021.

On a curved screen in the darkened gallery, an evocative lightshow of ever-changing shapes, colours, and shadows, created through reflection and refraction of light, emerges and evolves. The sequence develops and vanishes in a slow continuum that is at once two-dimensional and architectural. The viewer, despite knowing that the shapes she is watching emerge are only light projections sees space and three-dimensional forms where there are none. Behind the screen, the viewer can glimpse the apparatuses that are responsible for the complex lightshow – an orchestra of lenses, prisms, mirrors, and colour-effect filters. Many of these lenses were languishing in storage at the studio, the leftover pieces from other artworks and experiments, before being retooled for this artwork. Motors turn the various elements within the spotlights, so that the movements unleash a sequence of distortions, reflections, and refractions on the screen. The resulting composition makes visible the physical phenomenon of light bending and splitting. Although the sequence repeats in a continuous loop, the abstract nature of the work makes it appear always new, beyond simple comprehension.

As inspiration for his projection works, Olafur Eliasson cites the experiments in film and photography of the early twentieth century by constructivist and expressionist artists like Hans Richter and Laszlo Moholy-Nagy.

Image used on Blog post '1919' (from S3)

We are happy to announce ‘Your ocular relief’, Olafur Eliasson’s eleventh solo exhibition with Tanya Bonakdar Gallery in New York, on view from 9 March through 24 April 2021.

Since the early 1990s, Olafur Eliasson’s practice has concentrated around the investigation of perception, often using natural phenomena to heighten our understanding of each other and our surroundings. ‘Your ocular relief’ continues his long-standing investigation of the cognitive and cultural conditions of perception, seeking to offer an alternative to the current pressures that shape our existence.

‘I hope that “Your ocular relief” offers a moment to exhale. In this past year – at a time when it felt as if there were no release, no relaxation – I became convinced that we need a moment of relief, of beauty, of letting go, in order to conceive of a better tomorrow. Before you have hope, you have to have relief.’ – Olafur Eliasson

The glacier melt series 1999/2019, 2019 (detail) - Guggenheim Museum Bilbao – 2020 - Photo: Erika Ede

‘The glacier melt series 1999/2019’, 2019. Now on view as part of Olafur’s solo exhibition ‘In real life’ at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao. Photos: Erika Ede

The glacier melt series 1999/2019, 2019 - Guggenheim Museum Bilbao – 2020 - Photo: Erika Ede

In 1999, Olafur Eliasson photographed several dozen glaciers in Iceland as part of his on-going project to document the natural phenomena of the country; this particular series of photographs formed a work called ‘The glacier series’. Twenty years later, Eliasson decided to return to Iceland to photograph the glaciers again. A new work, ‘The glacier melt series 1999/2019’, brings together thirty pairs of images from 1999 and 2019 to reveal the dramatic impact that global warming is having on our world.

Your waste of time, 2006 - neugerriemschneider, Berlin, 2006 - Photo: Jens Ziehe

‘Your waste of time’, 2006. Several blocks of ice from Vatnajökull, the largest glacier in Iceland, were removed from the glacial lake Jökulsárlón, into which Vatnajökull flows. Part of the ice is thought to have been formed around 1200 CE. Weighing six tonnes in all, the blocks were transported to the Berlin gallery neugerriemschneider, where they were exhibited in a refrigerated space. Photo: Jens Ziehe

‘It is a challenge to verbalise time itself, even though, paradoxically, talking takes time. Describing time in conversation tends to take away the duration from it, as it is mostly described as an idea or concept. For me, the idea of time becomes especially abstract when we consider the history of our universe, the vast time of deep cosmology, the geological time in the history of the planet, the history of the atmosphere, the history of mountains. Vatnajökull, the glacier from which the blocks of ice in Your waste of time come, formed some 2,500 years ago; the oldest ice that still exists in it is from around 1200 CE. This span of time lies at the limits of comprehension.

‘But it is possible to stretch our frame of reference. When we touch these blocks of ice with our hands, we are not just struck by the chill; we are struck by the world itself. We take time from the glacier by touching it. In a sense, “Your waste of time” is a “waste of time” because I shipped the ice across the world for it to be on view for a short period of time, after which it melts away – a nanosecond in the life of the glacier. Then there’s another way in which time is wasted: we take away time from the glacier by touching it. Suddenly I make the glacier understood to me, its temporality. It is linked to the time the water took to become ice, a glacier. By touching it, I embody my knowledge by establishing physical contact. And suddenly we understand that we do actually have the capacity to understand the abstract with our senses. Touching time is touching abstraction.’

– Olafur Eliasson on his artwork ‘Your waste of time’

Stardust particle, 2014 - Photo: Jens Ziehe

‘Stardust particle’, 2014 (photo: Jens Ziehe) – now on view as part of Eliasson’s solo exhibition ‘In real life’, Guggenheim Museum Bilbao.

Your uncertain shadow (colour), 2010 - Studio Olafur Eliasson – 2019 - Photo: María del Pilar García Ayensa / Studio Olafur Eliasson

‘Your uncertain shadow (colour)’, 2010. Courtesy of Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary. Now on view as part of Eliasson’s solo exhibition ‘In real life’, at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao.

‘How do emotions work to secure collectives through the way in which they read the bodies of others? How do emotions work to align some subjects with some others and against other others? … emotions play a crucial role in the “surfacing” of individual and collective bodies. Such an argument challenges any assumption that emotions are a private matter, that they simply belong to individuals and that they come from within and then move outwards towards others. It suggests that emotions are not simply “within” or “without”, but that they define the contours of the multiple worlds that are inhabited by different subjects.’ – Sara Ahmed, ‘Collective Feelings. Or, The Impressions Left by Others’, 2004

Atmospheric wave wall, 2020 - Willis Tower, Chicago – 2020 - Photo: Darris Lee Harris

‘Atmospheric wave wall’, 2020, permanent installation on the exterior of Willis Tower, Chicago (photo: Darris Lee Harris)

Motion is the central principle behind this public artwork, planned especially for Willis Tower. The dynamic pattern on the wall is activated by the motion of people walking, driving, or biking past; by the motion of the earth in relation to the sun as light moves across it; and by changes in the season and weather. Viewing the work from various positions and at various times of day produces a dramatically different experience. The artwork covers the wall with a pattern of metal tiles based on Penrose tiling. Discovered by mathematician and physicist Sir Roger Penrose in the 1970s, this approach produces a system of non-periodic tiling that is based on five-fold symmetry. The result feels both regular and random, hovering just beyond our ability to quickly comprehend it.

Each tile is curved, a fragment of the inner surface of a sphere, and the main tones used in the work – blue, deep green, and white – are redolent of the surfaces of nearby Lake Michigan and the Chicago River. The concave shapes and colors of the tiles produce a dynamic effect when visitors walk around it. Seen from certain angles, the pattern reveals a vortex that seems to twist and accelerate in response to viewers’ movements. The enameled steel gently catches the light of the sun; the concave surfaces collect shadows that shift as the day progresses. At night the work is lit from behind so that flashes of light escape through the interstices between the tiles. As viewers move, the pattern of light appears to move with them, revealing the underlying geometry of the work and creating a captivating effect that activates the street around the building at night, attracting visitors at all hours.

Atmospheric wave wall, 2020 - Willis Tower, Chicago – 2020 - Photo: Darris Lee Harris

'Atmospheric wave wall’, 2020 (photo: EQ Office)

It was a great pleasure for me to create a work of art specifically for Willis Tower and for Chicago. Inspired by the unpredictable weather that I witnessed stirring up the surface of Lake Michigan, 'Atmospheric wave wall‘' appears to change according to your position and to the time of day and year. What we see depends on our point of view: understanding this is an important step toward realizing that we can change reality. It is my hope that this subtle intervention can make a positive contribution to the building and to the local community by reflecting the complex activity all around us, the invisible interactions and minute fluctuations that make up our shared public space.

I’m excited to share that 'Atmospheric wave wall‘ at Willis Tower on the exterior Jackson Blvd. wall in Chicago has been unveiled today!

Image used on Blog post '1905' (from S3)

STUDIO BERLIN exhibition catalogue, 2020

Older    Newer