London’s Tate Modern shows with “In real life” for the first time 40 works by the Danish-Icelandic artist. In surprising installations, Olafur Eliasson deals with the Fragility of nature.
An Olafur Eliasson Installation is not letting go of the viewer. It is almost impossible not to with the own shadow, with the nested mirror or with a breathing wall of moss to engage in dialogue. What hope is likely that many artists of their works, creates Eliasson seemingly playful, if also out of Conviction.
“While there are objects that can exhibit in a gallery and which may be collected also, but it’s actually about the encounter itself,” said the Danish-Icelandic artist, in a DW Interview on the occasion of a solo exhibition in Berlin in 2010. These encounters, the Tate Gallery of Modern Art in London now until the beginning of 2020, a special room: a Solo exhibition with works of Olafur Eliasson’s from the past three decades.
Art from nature
At first glance, the installations appear to be quite simple and clearly structured, often created from natural materials. And yet it manages Eliasson, to create an Interplay of light and space moments, the touch, in which the works of art something in a trigger. “In Real Life” is the comprehensive London Show, “in real life”.
Natural wall carpet: Installation of moss from 1994
This is exactly what “real life”, remembered the young Olafur Eliasson, as he came in 1994 after studying art in Copenhagen to Germany. To be able to on the art market, he quickly realized that he had to throw all the theoretical Knowledge on Board, in order to find your own topic. He grounded himself with walking tours in his native Iceland. “Every stone, every smell, the water, the light, and each hole in the ground, I have seen, but every day is different,” he once said in an Interview with the “mirror”. He had found his theme: the relationship between man and nature.
These artistic beginnings are now to be seen in London. How, for example, “Moss Wall, 1994” – an oversized, 20-Meter-long wall made of Finnish reindeer moss. The huge living organism is already to smell before entering the room. Is it allowed to touch him? Absolutely! Olafur Eliasson believes in a responsible, fully Mature Museum visitors, the you do not need to explain to a work on text boards. And it will not destroy.
Water games and an artificial rainbow
Rather, it always goes back to the subjective perception, the Experience of art with all the senses by means of the artificial reproduction of natural phenomena. Water is a recurring Element – for example, in “Beauty 1993”: The well-known, simple water installation created thanks to the headlights of a rainbow in the room. Or the work of “Big Bang Fountain, 2014”, which was created about 20 years later. The water fountain in a darkened room, and only thanks to a short light pulse at precisely the Moment in which she falls at its peak in together. In addition, Eliasson designed using scaffolding especially for the Solo Show in an eleven-metre-high waterfall to the terrace of the Tate Modern.
So simple, so beautiful: An artificial rainbow is art
In other works, in turn, the viewer is thrown back on itself and experiences itself and its perception. For example, in “Your Spiral View” (2002), a giant walk-in kaleidoscope made of Mirrors. You can see on the left, what is it? A border experience in the Installation “Your blind passenger, 2010,” a 39-Meter-long mist corridor in which the visitor only sees his feet and along the walls of keys, must.
It goes on
The Show has a timeless look. Without text panels, it is difficult, the years of the works to be fixed. These are still just as relevant as 30 years ago, said Eliasson, the German press news Agency a day before the opening. The visitors of today, would you “see” with new eyes. As a retrospective, he wanted to know the exhibition, therefore, is not understood. “I hope to work another 30 years,” said the 52-year-old.
Tabula rasa in the mirror-tube: walk-in kaleidoscope of 2002
The Tate Modern is a special place for the Danish-Icelandic light artist. For the gigantic turbine hall of the former Tate-power plant, he created for the ceiling of 2003 “Weather Project” a glowing sun in a mirror. A milestone of contemporary art, the two million people attended, and thus his career a massive upswing was.
Art for climate protection
From the young art student is become an art entrepreneur. Since the 1990s, based in Berlin, in a former factory building in Prenzlauer Berg in a Studio with around 100 staff to implement his designs. They are also part of the exhibition: Every two weeks, brought some of them on Live feed from Berlin virtually to the call to London.
A good mood in Eliasson-art operating a canteen of their own, which makes the Icelanders for his Crew and makes. For him, a place where all the employees meet informally and exquisite organic food. Actually, for External closed, the Eliasson-Cuisine during the Solo Show in the now for each and every accessible. For the Terrace Bar of the Tate Modern with its chefs will offer as in his Berlin Studio, regional, vegetarian food.
Tangible climate change: In the Installation of organic glacial ice melts on the upper deck in front of the entrance of the Tate Modern
In the exhibition, Olafur Eliasson’s climate policy Engagement is clear. So he had, for example, in 2018, man-sized chunks of Greenland’s glacier ice in front of the entrance to the Tate Modern – the London should get the possibility of the melting of the eternal ice directly experience. Photos of it, as well as photos of glaciers in Iceland, taken by the artist, are on Display.
Eliasson: “In the Museum, we ask ourselves”
Also the London Museum itself is climate-conscious: All the works in the Solo exhibition are on the Land or sea to London have been brought. In an Interview, Eliasson said surprisingly challenging: “It is sometimes a bit of work to go to the Museum. This is not like going to a supermarket. We are here, to ourselves to question, to examine ourselves, to see ourselves in the context of the world.”
The exhibition ends with a very special project, Eliasson’s, which is far more than art: “Little Sun”. The small solar lamp gives light for five hours, and to keep especially in many family house, in sub-Saharan Africa be useful, which are not connected to the electricity grid.