THIS WEEK’S MUSE
Olafur Eliasson, installation artist
“Over the years, in making art, I have constantly explored issues dealing with space, time, light, and society.”
Unlike many art genres, the term Installation Art is reasonably self-explanatory. It typically describes three-dimensional art designed to transform a space. It is often site-specific and temporary.
Olafur Eliasson is an Icelandic–Danish artist known for his large-scale installation artwork but pushes the concept further by using unexpected components—moss, glacial meltwater, fog, rainbows, air temperature—to enhance his viewer’s experience.
After completing his studies—and winning a Scandinavian break-dancing championship with his group called The Harlem Gun Crew—Eliasson’s approach to creating art was filtered through an interest in “architecture and spatial geometry.” And from very early on, he wanted to create experiences that were not only ambitious in scope and concept but that would also require the viewer to take a step into the unknown with him.
One of his first works, the co-produced 8900054, was a 30-foot steel dome ‘growing’ from the ground. By planting the idea in the viewer that the work was a much larger, buried structure, he was already challenging traditional perceptions of reality, and preconceptions of art.
For Eliasson, creating an installation isn’t simply about bringing the art into a space, it is also about how that space is subsequently transformed; how the space itself becomes a part of the installation.
Further, he is interested in how the viewer also adds visually and conceptually to the work. Not only is the viewer’s behavior altered because of their participation, but they are a part of the work. Take away the people, he argues, and the installation is incomplete.
His work, Riverbed, for example, uses rocks and stones on the installation space floor. Our expectations and preconceptions are destabilized as we are forced to walk differently and engage directly with it.
Another work, Beauty, takes us into a dark room filled with fine water spray. Rainbows are formed in the mist, colors and reflections are created all around the space, but what one individual sees can be completely different from what others see. The experience is unique, he argues, “just like in life.”
“I am particularly interested in how the light of a space determines how we see that space and similarly, in how light and color are actually phenomena within us, within our own eyes.”
His approach to creating art can be seen to come from three personal points of view –his concern for nature, his fascination with geometry, and his research into how we perceive, feel and shape the world around us. It is this latter interest, though less easy to measure, that perhaps defines his work.
Eliasson puts experience at the center of his work. He hopes that as we experience it, we add meaning to it by bringing our own unique associations and memories to these experiences.
We subsequently become more aware of our sense of place in the world, and of the others around us within the installation. For Eliasson, this heightened sense of self and being part of ‘something else’ then helps provoke a new sense of responsibility.
“Having an experience is taking part in the world. Taking part in the world is really about sharing responsibility.”
HAPPENING
ANIMAL KINGDOM – Online Gallery
Deadline: April 21, 2023
Whether it’s domestic pets doing amazing things – or wild and wonderful animals in nature, show us how animals connect to your life.
Show us your love, your fears, your fascination, and your connection to animals through your art– all and any animals; however, you experience them.