Olafur Eliasson (; born 5 February 1967) is an Icelandic–Danish artist known for sculptured and large-scaled installation art employing elemental materials such as light, water, and air temperature to enhance the viewer's experience.
In 1995, Olafur established Studio Olafur Eliasson in Berlin, a laboratory for spatial research. In 2014, Olafur and his long-time collaborator – German architect Sebastian Behmann – founded Studio Other Spaces, an office for architecture and art.
Olafur represented Denmark at the 50th Venice Biennale in 2003 and later that year installed The Weather Project, which has been described as "a milestone in contemporary art", in the Turbine Hall of Tate Modern, London.
Olafur has engaged in a number of public projects, including the intervention Green river, carried out in various cities between 1998 and 2001; the Serpentine Gallery Pavilion 2007, London, a temporary pavilion designed with the Norwegian architect Kjetil Trædal Thorsen; and the New York City Waterfalls, commissioned by Public Art Fund in 2008. Olafur also created the Breakthrough Prize trophy. Like much of his work, the sculpture explores the common ground between art and science. It is molded into the shape of a toroid, recalling natural forms found from black holes and galaxies to seashells and coils of DNA.
Olafur was a professor at the Berlin University of the Arts from 2009 to 2014 and has been an adjunct professor at the Alle School of Fine Arts and Design in Addis Ababa since 2014. His studio is based in Berlin, Germany.
Life and career
Early life and education Olafur Eliasson was born in Copenhagen in 1967 to Elías Hjörleifsson and Ingibjörg Ólafsdóttir.Cynthia Zarin (November 13, 2006), "Seeing Things: The art of Olafur Eliasson", The New Yorker. His parents had emigrated to Copenhagen from Iceland in 1966, his father to find work as a cook and his mother as a seamstress. He was 8 when his parents separated.Dorothy Spears (September 2, 2007), "Thinking Glacially, Acting Artfully", The New York Times. He lived with his mother and his stepfather, a stockbroker. His father, then an artist, moved back to Iceland, where their family spent summers and holidays.
At 15, Olafur had his first solo show where he exhibited landscape drawings and gouaches at a small alternative gallery in Denmark. However, Olafur considered his "break-dancing" during the mid-1980s to be his first artworks.Joachim Bessing, "Experiencing Space," 032c issue 8 (Winter 2004/05). With two school friends, he formed a group that called themselves the Harlem Gun Crew and with whom he performed at clubs and dance halls for four years, eventually winning the Scandinavian championship.
Olafur studied at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts from 1989 to 1995. In 1990, when he was awarded a travel budget by the Royal Danish Academy, Olafur went to New York where he started working as a studio assistant for artist Christian Eckart in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and reading texts on phenomenology and Gestalt psychology.Christopher Bagley (July 2007), From the Archives: Olafur Twist W.
Artistic career Olafur received his degree from the academy in 1995, after having moved in 1993 to Cologne for a year, and then to Berlin, where he has since maintained a studio.Peter Schjeldahl (28 April 2008), Uncluttered. An Olafur Eliasson retrospective, The New Yorker. First located in a three-story former train depot right next door to the Hamburger Bahnhof, the studio moved to a former brewery in Prenzlauer Berg in 2008.
In 1996, Olafur started working with Einar Thorsteinn, an architect and geometry expert 25 years his senior as well as a former friend of Buckminster Fuller. The first piece they created called 8900054, was a stainless-steel dome wide and high, designed to be seen as if it were growing from the beneath the ground. Thorsteinn's knowledge of geometry and space has been integrated into Olafur's artistic production, often seen in his geometric lamp works as well as his pavilions, tunnels and camera obscura projects.
For many projects, the artist works collaboratively with specialists in various fields, among them the architects Thorsteinn and Sebastian Behmann (both of whom have been frequent collaborators, Behmann working on the Kirk Kapital headquarters on Vejle Fjord in Denmark, completed in 2018), author Svend Åge Madsen (The Blind Pavilion), landscape architect Gunther Vogt (The Mediated Motion), architecture theorist Cedric Price (Chaque matin je me sens différent, chaque soir je me sens le même), and architect Kjetil Thorsen (Serpentine Gallery Pavilion, 2007). Studio Olafur Eliasson, which the artist founded as a "laboratory for spatial research", employs a team of architects, engineers, craftsmen, and assistants (some 30 members as of 2008) who work together to conceive and construct artworks such as installations and sculptures, as well as large-scale projects and commissions.City of New York (January 15, 2008). "Mayor Bloomberg and Public Art Fund Announce Major Public Art Project by Artist Olafur Eliasson " [press release], section "About the Artist". Retrieved 2016-07-16. Olafur is influenced by Bruce Nauman, as well as James Turrell and Robert Irwin.
As professor at the Berlin University of the Arts, Olafur Eliasson founded the Institute for Spatial Experiments (, IfREX), which opened within his studio building in April 2009. Huffington Post named Olafur one of "18 green artists who are making climate change and conservation a priority."
Selected works and projects Beauty (1993) Nadine Wojcik, after attending the In real life exhibition in 2019, dubbed Beauty (1993) a "simple yet powerful water installation that evokes a rainbow via spotlights". Anna Souter called the work "a reminder of the intensely fragile beauty of the natural world and its elements. ... it's simply and superbly beautiful".
Ventilator pieces Early works by Olafur consist of oscillating electric fans hanging from the ceiling. Ventilator (1997) swings back and forth and around, rotating on its axis. Quadrible light ventilator mobile (2002–2007) is a rotating electrically powered mobile comprising a searchlight and four fans blowing air around the exhibition room and scanning it with the light cone.Olafur Eliasson: Quadrible light ventilator mobile (2002–07) Arken Museum of Modern Art. In a 2008 review of the Take Your Time retrospective (at the Museum of Modern Art), Peter Schjeldahl dubbed Ventilator "a witty finesse of the MOMA atrium's space-splurging grandiosity".
The Weather Project
The Weather Project was installed at the London's Tate Modern in 2003 as part of the popular Unilever series. The installation filled the open space of the gallery's Turbine Hall.
Olafur used humidifiers to create a fine mist in the air via a mixture of sugar and water, as well as a semicircular disc (reflected by the ceiling mirror to appear circular) made up of hundreds of monochromatic lamps which radiated yellow light. The ceiling of the hall was covered with a huge mirror, in which visitors could see themselves as tiny black shadows against a mass of orange light symbolizing the sun. Many visitors responded to this exhibition by lying on their backs and waving their hands and legs. Art critic Brian O'Doherty described this as viewers "intoxicated with their own narcissism as they ponder themselves elevated into the sky.""Public Spectacle: Mark Godfrey and Rosie Bennett talk to Brian O'Doherty," Frieze, issue 80, Jan./Feb. 2004, p. 56.
The Weather Project was highly successful. Open for six months, the work reportedly attracted two million visitors, many of whom were repeat visitors. O'Doherty was positive about the piece when talking to Frieze magazine in 2003, saying that it was "the first time I've seen the enormously dismal space—like a coffin for a giant—socialized in an effective way." The Telegraph's Richard Dorment praised its "beauty and power". It remains his most famous work and ranked 11th in a poll by The Guardian of the best art since 2000, with Jonathan Jones describing Olafur as "one of the century's most significant artists.". The Weather Project attempted to give viewers the impression that they were near the sun inside the clouds, but in actuality, a large semicircle was suspended from a mirror ceiling, giving the impression that the reflection was a full circle. The mirrors on the ceiling produced the image of the space below that was visible. The audience completed the effect by frequently being observed lying down on their backs, staring at the ceiling, and making various motions to observe their reflections. This was done by both adults and children.
Light installations
Olafur has been developing various experiments with atmospheric density in exhibition spaces. In Room For One Colour (1998), a corridor lit by low pressure sodium lamps, the participants find themselves in a room filled with monochromatic yellow light which affects their perception of colours. Another installation, 360 degrees Room For All Colours (2002), is a round light-sculpture where participants lose their sense of space and perspective, and experience being subsumed by an intense light.Ólafur Eliasson: Colour memory and other informal shadows, January 24 – May 2, 2004 Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art. Olafur's later installation Din blinde passager (Your blind passenger) (2010), commissioned by the Arken Museum of Modern Art, is a 90-metre-long tunnel. Entering the tunnel, the visitor is surrounded by dense fog. With visibility at just 1.5 metres, museumgoers have to use senses other than sight to orient themselves in relation to their surroundings.Olafur Eliasson – Din blinde passager at ARKEN Arken Museum of Modern Art. After attending the 2019 In real life exhibition, Souter deemed Your blind passenger one of Olafur's finest works, reporting that she felt "alone in the universe. ... I thought I could see my own irises, flashing as a ring of blue in front of me, and I could hear my own heartbeat in my ears." For Feelings are facts, the first time Olafur has worked with Chinese architect Yansong Ma as well as his first exhibition in China, Olafur introduces condensed banks of artificially produced fog into the gallery of Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing. Hundreds of fluorescent lights are installed in the ceiling as a grid of red, green, and blue zones.
Green river In 1998, Olafur discovered that uranin, a readily available nontoxic powder used to trace leaks in plumbing systems, could dye entire rivers a sickly fluorescent green. Olafur conducted a test run in the Spree River during the 1998 Berlin Biennale, scattering a handful of powder from a bridge near Museum Island. He began introducing the environmentally safe dye to rivers in Moss, Norway (1998), Bremen (1998), Los Angeles (1999), Stockholm (2000) and Tokyo (2001) — always without advance warning. He first achieved international prominence with Green river, which initially made Stockholm pedestrians concerned that the city's water had been tainted.
Riverbed At Denmark's Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in 2014–2015, Olafur created a riverbed installation. He compiled natural rocks, dirt, and water to transform the gallery space into a landscape and titled the piece, "Riverbed". Olafur captures physical phenomena in a way that appears both real and slightly artificial, while contained in a constructed space that invites viewers to participate. Riverbed becomes an immersive experience, using all five senses, in which the individuals can either follow or curiously step away from. Freedom exists in both of these actions, allowing the participant to discover a paradox or enter a void, questioning their true freedom and will happening within a designed system.