Dubbed ‘The Big Book of Everything’ by the studio during its multi-year development, Experience – published by Phaidon earlier this week – distills almost three decades of Olafur’s experiments into 440 pages. The monograph gives a chronological overview of his installations, large-scale sculpture, architectural projects, and interventions in urban space while also featuring smaller, more delicate artworks, including paintings and drawings, photographs, and glass works.
Congratulations to Little Sun, who just won the Creator Award for Best Non-Profit last night in Berlin!
Opening today in Singapore: Seu corpo da Obra (your body of work), 2011, ArtScience Museum, and Room for one colour, 1997, National Gallery Singapore
Parallel to the development of the design for the opera Hippolyte et Aricie at the Staatsoper in Berlin, the studio collaborated with artist Benjamin Skop, whose work studies the movements of the human body, in a series of videos. In this video, Skop amplifies his movements with lasers to produce ephemeral, geometric shapes.
Tomas Saraceno - On Air, Palais de Tokyo. 'Which synaesthetic modes of perception do we need to re-sense the world we live with? Algo-r(h)i(y)thms is an invitation to join a three-month long cosmic jam session, playing with, and becoming part of, a network of unexpected encounters. When you touch the strings, they resonate at different frequencies, some audible and some beyond the human range of hearing, as infrasounds.'
For the visual concept of the upcoming run of ‘Hippolyte et Aricie’ at the Staatsoper in Berlin, Olafur has approached the costuming as part sculpture, part body extension. This opera’s concept finds historical sympathies with the work of the visionary German painter, sculptor, choreographer, and costume and set designer Oskar Schlemmer, associated with the Bauhaus school. Having produced many works that crossed creative disciplines, Schlemmer described his performance as ‘artistic metaphysical mathematics’ and a ‘party in form and colour’. Parallel to his artistic career, the West had entered into the automated era, and Schlemmer’s theatre productions reflected a kind of romantic pursuit of detached forms through abstraction of performers’ bodies. In his costuming concepts, he would use geometric forms to dramatically extend limbs into space, blurring the boundary between costume, architecture, and stage set. The effect was that the players would appear robotic, ‘post-flesh’, while the combination of costume and dance made an emotional, human appeal to the audience.
Premiering on 25 November at Staatsoper, Berlin: Hippolyte et Aricie, by French baroque composer Jean-Phillipe Rameau and for which Olafur created the sets, costumes, and overall lighting concept
What lies at the edge of our senses and knowledge, of our imagination and our expectations?
Where is the horizon that divides, for each of us, the known from the unknown?
High Life - a new film by Claire Denis. Olafur gave artistic advice on the film, and Denis and he have been in conversation about topics like light, space, and black holes since his 2014 exhibition 'Contact' in Paris
During the experimentation and development stage for the set, and costume design for Hippolyte et Aricie
Claire Denis and Olafur Eliasson during the filming of Contact
Contact - a film by Claire Denis. In 2014, Olafur and filmmaker Claire Denis met to discuss their common fascination with phenomena that have not yet been fully explained by science – such as black holes – and their shared interest in abstraction; this short film by Denis, contemplating tests for Eliasson's work ‘Contact’, 2014, is one outcome of that conversation. Watch the full film on www.soe.tv
Love sphere, 2018. ‘I like the idea of using art and culture to generate awareness and support for people to get healthy. There are amazing stories of what happens through access to life-saving anti-retroviral medication, but the fight is only at the halfway point. This is a dangerous time because people think AIDS isn't a threat anymore. We have to keep the pressure on and get new generations involved at home if we’re going to put an end to AIDS once and for all’, says artist Theaster Gates, who, together with Sir David Adjaye, has collaborated with musician and activist Bono to curate the third (RED) Auction to support the fight against AIDS. Centred on the theme of light and the colour red, the collection of contemporary art and design will be auctioned by Sotheby’s during Art Basel Miami Beach and Design Miami on the evening of 5 December 2018 – including global bidding that will be available live online and by phone. The auction will be preceded by a public exhibition presented by Gagosian at the famed Moore Building, which will open 1 December. Olafur has donated his work ‘Love sphere’ to be auctioned at the event. To date, (RED) has generated more than $500 million for the Global Fund to support lifesaving HIV/AIDS programs in Africa. Proceeds from this year’s auction will continue to support community-based programs in Africa through the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, while also providing assistance to the HIV fight through community-strengthening programmes in Chicago with the Rebuild Foundation – an organisation championed by Theaster Gates. Lear more here: red.org
Olafur on Glacier - a new book by Ragnar Axelsson: 'There is a strange human longing for untouched nature. This is neither new nor exceptional, it’s a mode of reflecting on oneself in relation to ‘the other’, to ‘the big beyond’, a longing out of which ideals and utopias are constructed. Ragnar Axelsson, however, eschews utopias, taking another route. He has a calm, analytical gaze. The extraordinary photographs presented in this volume bring that which is otherwise invisible to our eyes and minds, into the realm of the visible. Axelsson’s almost scientific approach – which also embraces the immaterial and the atmospheric – brings these Icelandic landscapes to our attention, makes them felt. Axelsson is clearly comfortable with the abstract and with the patterns that physical landscapes create. He embraces the commingling of abstraction and beauty head-on, yet his pictures are always present, accessible, there for you. They are open, ready to meet up. The artist stays in the background, a facilitator of encounters between the landscape and your own way of seeing. Nature becomes landscape the moment it touches a person: you, the viewer. You – never an eye only, but a vibrant composite of ongoing perceptual and cerebral activities interlinking, framing, and shaping each other. You look, supported by your body – a biological entity – and by your cultural framework, your worldview, your everyday with its little challenges, big challenges, and moments of hesitation and of joy. In your encounter with the landscape it is changed and it changes you.'
The new Little Sun Black Diamond - a special edition available from 1 November until Christmas. For every lamp sold as part of this campaign, two solar lamps will go to people in an area without reliable access to energy.
Premiering on 25 November at Staatsoper, Berlin: Hippolyte et Aricie, by French baroque composer Jean-Phillipe Rameau, for which Olafur created sets, costumes, and overall lighting concept.
When our governments fail to protect our planet, it’s time to take action ourselves, to become aware of local initiatives and ways to get involved. In light of this past weekend’s election of Jair Bolsonaro as the new president of Brazil, we want to take some time to consider its imminent impact on the global climate crisis and options for moving forward. Brazil was an early leader of international climate protection initiatives back in the 1990s. With a population of over 200 million today, it is vital that Brazil stay committed to curbing carbon emissions and deforestation. Brazil is also home to 60% of the Amazon rainforest, known as the lungs of the earth. Bolsonaro has been vocal about his admiration for US president Trump’s decision to leave the Paris climate accord, as well as about abolishing Brazil’s environment ministry and opening up protected rainforest areas to industry. Indigenous communities in Brazil are also under grave threat from this seismic political shift. When governments fail we can put our resources into organisations advocating for environmental protections in Brazil, by contributing our time, money, and/or voices. For a map of local organisations working to make Brazil carbon neutral and save its rainforest, visit: 350.org Another important resource is Amazon Watch - an NGO founded in 1996 to protect the rainforest and advance the rights of indigenous peoples in the Amazon Basin. They partner with indigenous and environmental organisations in campaigns for human rights, corporate accountability, and the preservation of the Amazon's ecological systems. Amazon Watch’s work is focused on three main priorities: to stop Amazon destruction, to advance indigenous solutions, and to support climate justice. Visit amazonwatch.org - there are many ways in which you could get involved!
Reality oscillator, 2018
via Instagram
The new planet, 2014
Studio Other Spaces (SOS) is an office for art and architecture founded by artist Olafur Eliasson and architect Sebastian Behmann. In 2011, Eliasson and Behmann proposed an extension - based on the figure of the oloid - of the Berlin Philharmonie to complement and connect to Hans Scharoun’s Philharmonie and the Kammermusiksaal.
Homage to P. Schatz, 2012. The shape of this luminous sculpture derives from the oloid, a three-dimensional figure discovered by the scientist and mathematician Paul Schatz. The oloid’s form is conceived around two congruent circles, placed perpendicular to one another and with the centre of each intersected by the circumference of the other. Homage to P. Schatz references this geometrical discovery but exaggerates the form by elongating it, as if the work were pushing itself apart from within. A translucent skin that refracts light into its spectral colours adds another layer of visual ambiguit
Curator and art historian Michelle Kuo visited the studio in January 2018, sharing her research and why she is interested in how contemporary artists explore new systems for thinking about the future. Her extensive essay on Olafur introduces our new book; Experience. You can watch the full interview on SOE.TV