Olafur Eliasson - extraordinary player in the area of ​​tension between art, environment and future vision

What does physics have to do with art? A lot of, actually as much as physics also has to do with nature. Many artists deal with nature, with physics in nature rather few.

Olafur Eliasson does exactly - and creates beautiful works of art by converting the physical phenomena in the light and in movement, in water and in the reflections of the substances into art objects that fascinate the viewer.

Eliasson was born on February 5, 1967 in Copenhagen, then his Icelandic parents pulled back from the Danish capital to the home island, where Eliasson spent his childhood.

The growth in the Icelandic town of Hafnarfjördur , a port city on the North Atlantic southwest coast of Iceland, was certainly not detrimental to the artistic imagination of the inspired artist: Hafnarfjördur is considered one of the centers in which Iceland's elves collect. Many Icelanders still believe in their existence today, with alleged elven apartments (and with children), tender is handled.

Olafur Eliasson wanted himself and his Relationship with elvesBut never at the center of his art, he already went to Copenhagen for his art studies, where he studied at the Royal Danish art academy until 1991.

Eliasson brought a random acquaintance into contact with Berlin gallery owners and meant that Eliasson was able to realize his first exhibition in Berlin : Tim Neuger and Burkhard Riemschneider had noticed the works by Eliasson, and they exhibited him in the city that was just freed by the turn, even if they themselves had to work on the side to finance the costs.

From 1994, Eliasson lived in the whole of Berlin, where he could benefit from the contacts that resulted from the numerous artists who have continued to pour into the capital, which has been chosen again since the turn.

The first projects presented oscillating fans with an electric drive , which are vibuted and may still turn around their own axis. Such a fan was exhibited in 1998 at the first Berlin Biennale in the historical postal engine used for exhibition purposes, and this project helped the artist to be very popular in Berlin.

It fit well with Eliasson's view of art, when the Expo 2000 was to create a “new type” of world exhibition in which future visions should be shown as well as exhibits that illustrate the sensitive balance of nature and man and technology. An Expo project as part of the “Regional 2000 / Expo Initiative OWL” was the idea of ​​the “Garten-Landschaft Ostwestfalenlippe”, for which Eliasson created a fragrance tunnel in which he gathered heavily fragrant plant species from the botanical garden in Gütersloh.

Over time its projects are increasingly spectacular And the artist is increasingly interesting:
From 1998 to 2001 his project lasted Green Riverin which he colored the water in a wide variety of rivers in the world. Of course, with a completely harmless dye, but nobody knew that: the dismayed or appeasing or perplexed reactions of the surprised public and the equally uninformed authorities should be part of art.

The year 2003 marked a major breakthrough for Eliasson, when he was able to realize his "Weather Project" in the vast Turbine Hall of London's Tate Modern. A gigantic sun made of hundreds of light bulbs illuminated the large hall, which, mirrored from the ceiling and filled with mist from a fog machine, became a grand, romantic scene that was enjoyed by 2.2 million people over six months.

In 2004 he created the “descriptions” , an endless staircase that circles itself like a kind of double helix, the accessible work of art adorns the German headquarters of an international auditing company in Munich. In 2005, also in Munich, the glass facade was built for the building in which the Bavarian State Opera operates its rehearsal stage.

The completely new type of glass surface is called “Stage Window” and is made of tinted layers that are simultaneously transparent and reflect the life on the Marstallplatz square in front of it. In 2006, this was followed by “light lab,” a light installation for the roof of the Portikus, an exhibition building for contemporary art in Frankfurt am Main, which constantly changed the appearance of the Portikus for two years.

In 2008, Eliasson installed huge waterfalls at four points in Manhattan, these “New York City Waterfalls” had incredible amounts of water on the East River for three months, whereby the trade with wind energy is said to have collected the energy consumption of this water cycle.

Also in 2008, the “Yellow Fog” pulled up at the Vienna building of the Österreichische AG for electricity, and made the old place “Am Hof” at dusk for an hour for a performance of fog, wind and light. This installation illustrated two of the artist's main concerns: the change in the view and sensation of urban space through art and the perception of the time, which changes in the daily rhythm and leaves completely different sensory impressions.

His most recent major project was the facade for the new “Harpa” concert hall in Reykjavík, a honeycomb -like glass installation, the dichroitical glass of which reacts to weather and daylight and thus captured the many different lighting moods that a port city on the island of Iceland. The concert hall was opened in 2011.

Eliasson many honors z. B. the culture award presented by the Danish couple of crown and the Spanish Joan-Miró Prize. In addition to his installations in public spaces, he showed his art at prominent exhibitions, on Biennals in Berlin and Venice, in the London Tate Gallery and in the New York Museum of Modern Art, in the Munich Pinakothek der Moderne and in the Hamburg Kunsthalle and in the Center for International Light Art in Unna.

And he can always be seen in Berlin, whether in an exhibition in the Martin Gropius Building, in his Gallery Neuerrriemschneider or directly in the urban area, e.g. B. with a light installation that was shown in 2005 for the opening exhibition of the new building of the Academy of the Arts on Pariser Platz.

His students can experience him directly in his studio , a converted Berlin factory building, by now working on his designs. Because Eliasson was appointed to the Berlin University of the Arts in 2006, in 2009 he founded the Institute for Room Experiments there, but he mostly stops the university courses in his own studio.

Since 2012 he has been a member of the Berlin Academy of Arts, as an active member, from which further presence in the city is expected.

Although the committed artist is now called “the very big one” in one breath, he does not put the commercial success in the foreground of his work. His latest project, exhibited at the Tate Gallery London in summer 2012, is called “Little Sun”.

In it you also see a small selection of his installations. So you get a little insight into his fantastic world. Unfortunately, this video is only available in English. But the pictures alone also speak for themselves ...

more great videos, pictures of his works and information about the MoMA exhibition "Take Your Time" about Olafur Eliasson from 2008 directly on the website of the New York Museum :
Exhibition "Take Your Time" for Olafur Eliasson

Olafur Eliasson's "Endless staircase" at KPMG in Munich ;
by Oliver Raupach (own work) [CC-BY-SA-2.5], via Wikimedia Commons.