Olafur Eliassons Installation Art - Report Example

OLAFUR ELIASSON`S INSTALATION ART Dat The of modern Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson has become known in the world of art several decades ago after his incredible installations dedicated to the forces of nature. Since then reference to his name evokes images of the pale sun burning inside of the Tate Modern or giant waterfalls installed under the Brooklyn bridge. It seems that Olafur Eliasson does not create anything revolutionary, he takes the most natural and familiar phenomena, such as light, air, water and reinvents them artistically so that people coming to see his installations ask themselves: “Why haven`t I noticed this beauty earlier?”. The power of Olafur Eliasson is in his incredible simplicity and sophistication, no exotic materials, no sensational messages; the author leaves huge space for the auditory to reconsider their traditional views by feeling, seeing, touching, and experiencing simple things again and again from the absolutely new perspective. Eliasson integrates scientific knowledge into artistic vision in order to show the most habitual but yet the most overwhelming natural phenomena, such as rainbow, falling water or shining of the sun. In order to understand how Eliasson created such a unique artistic style it is necessary to learn some facts about his background first of all. The artist was born in 1967 in Iceland and was raised in Denmark by his mother. However, his parents split up when the boy was still very small and Olafur had to spend a lot of time with his father in the countryside in Iceland. The time in such a beautiful surrounding (the power of Icelandic nature attracts numerous travelers and artists) under the influence of his creative father made a huge impression on the boy and turned him to nature as to the source of eternal inspiration1. Later he received an opportunity to study at the Royal Danish Academy and he did not waste his chance. After graduating from Academy he moved to Berlin, the center of contemporary European art at that period, in order to create his own studio. Today there are seventy five people working at Olafur Eliasson`s studio including artists, trained technicians, librarians, designers, architects, art historians, engineers, and programmers. As Eliasson`s works often presuppose substantial technical knowledge the collaboration of such a big number of different specialists is obligatory. The team works together closely to make up, design, and create the most striking installations, projects, and sculptures2. Since his first success Olafur has become one of the most productive contemporary artists in Europe, however, the quantity of his works does not affect their quality. A number of international exhibitions and projects were performed by Eliasson’s group for the last fifteen years, and the artist was an official delegate from Denmark to the 50th Venice Biennale installing his works in the blind pavilion.3 The most famous Eliasson`s projects include “The Weather Project” which was demonstrated in more than twenty countries of the world and the exhibition which was called “Take Your Time” created in collaboration with SFMOMA, the project that was travelling around the word galleries for the three years and was exhibited in the Museum of Modern Art in New York as well. “Inner City Out” along with “Your Body of Work” became celebrated in Asia and Latin America. With immense number of modern artists who are getting used to shock public Olafur Eliasson manages to preserve his image of an intellectual and sophisticated author and create another type of modern art. His works are made for enlightened and sensitive audience ready for broadening their perception. In this paper I will try to grasp the essence of his most renowned projects and installations and reveal the reasons behind his exceptional popularity. I am going to analyze those works which appealed to me and provoked positive emotional response in my soul first of all. The famous Eliasson`s work which was called “The Weather Project” is one of the most amazing and unexpected installations I have ever seen which made a huge impression on experienced London public as well. It is estimated that the Turbine Hall of the Tate Gallery where the installation was created was visited by more than two million people in six months, and many visitors came back again and again. 4 Bright orange sun of gigantic size made with the help of numerous mono-frequency bulbs was placed in the middle of the ceiling. Semi-circular screen was erected on the most distant wall and its reflection along with bulbs created the illusion of a huge fake sunset. The ceiling itself was also covered with mirrors which doubled the space of the hall and allowed visitors seeing themselves. Another important element of installation was a mist machine that produced a subtle mist that altered the perception of perspective making it impossible to determine the exact distance between objects by refracting the light.5 The mist, created with the help of sugar and water mixture, gathered into invisible, cloud-like formations during the day before dissolving across the hall. The whole installation turned out to be rather psychedelic and mood-altering and created powerful romantic atmosphere which attracted so many visitors.6 People came, lay down on the floor with their hands and legs in the air and plunged into incredible visual experience. The effect of the installation on London artistic public which seemed to have seen everything was enormous: artificial, fake sun attracted people as a magnet. The mirror on the ceiling allowed visitors to observe themselves as tiny spots in the stream of orange light and mist. Most of the visitors admitted the mystical effect of the installation; some claimed that they were filled with incredible religious revelation in the hall of the Tate Modern.7 In the course of installation preparation Olafur Eliasson asked the employees of the Tate Gallery typical questions about the weather. As the weather is perceived as the perfect topic for a small talk, its significance for people`s life is often neglected. The artist wanted to know if the weather had influenced someone`s life dramatically and how the weather was correlated to the tolerance to other people. The exhibition itself offered a great variety of printed materials on the weather topic including strange weather events, essays on the weather, and weather forecasts of different time periods. 8 It is surprising that about a quarter of all topics that people discuss in the dialogues concerns weather in this or that way. However, being unaware of the world around most people cannot even remember if it was raining on their way to work or not and when was the last time they saw real sunset. Eliasson on the contrary seems to learn how to see the world of nature with the baby`s eyes feeling, experiencing, and touching everything as if for the first time. Having developed this acute, emotional perception of reality he struggles to fill the public with this childlike awe. It is interesting that the process of creation of his works takes place in a lab and consists of numerous trials and practical experiments. So basically Eliasson engages in scientific work in order to stimulate emotional and sensational response in people.9The artist realized that the light and the space are illusions of the world and they exist merely inside the human brain. That is why he creates his own powerful and grandiose illusions with the help of science and his artistic talent but he lets his audience know that they are in the illusion by utilizing bright, surreal, artificial materials and forms10. Eliasson commented on his work on “The Weather Project” in a rather unexpected way: “‘Im not interested in weather as a matter of science. Im not a meteorologist or a botanist. Im interested in people: how people engage sensually with the qualities of weather – rain, mist, ice, snow, humidity – so that through their engagement they may understand how much of our lives are cultural constructions.’11 This combination of natural and artificial, the mixture of habitual and revolutionary , scientific and artistic wrapped in a rather simple cover suggests that Eliasson feels the essence of postmodernism and even predicts it to a certain extent. So maybe this ability to anticipate and create trends makes Olafur a significant player on the scene of modern art. Another impressive project “Your Rainbow Panorama” was created for a small Danish town called Aarhus. It is a one hundred and fifty metre-long and three metre-wide glass walkway made in the form of a circle. The construction is situated on the roof of the cubic museum and serves as both decoration due it its multicolored look and as an attraction12. The quantity of visitors of the museum has increased significantly since the Rainbow installation and turned the museum into the second most visited in the country. 13The surprising element of this installation is its permanence therefore; in such a way art is integrated completely into normal social life of wide public. Olafur is not afraid to create his installations and give them to people, is not afraid they will be transformed or lose meaning. He considers that his works of art acquire additional meaning even after the installation is over. Aarhus looks divided into different color zones from the glass rainbow. People can stroll inside the rainbow and enjoy beautiful panoramic view of the town colored in pink, violet or yellow depending on the position. Each segment of the construction is made from the glass of a different color that is why a visitor gets a chance to enjoy the whole spectrum and check his emotional attitude to it. “Your Rainbow Panorama” provokes powerful visual impact on the human`s brain because color is proven to evoke certain emotions and when a person gets into the situation of absolute illusion of total polychromy the exact emotional response of a concrete person is absolutely unpredictable.14 In this installation the movement of a visitor becomes a mechanism broadening his perception. Eliasson made all the possible to prepare a visitor to participation in the artistic process: he created a work of art which is still and monochrome in any given spot but the interaction between a visitor and the work of art gives it a completely new meaning. That is another important peculiarity of Eliasson`s works- as a wizard he expects his audience to become active participants, he leaves them no other choice than to enter the game of illusion. And then it creates some kind of magical effect when a person realizes that he became a tool of the work of art and the spectator simultaneously. 15The artist explains the purpose of the work in the following quite unpredictable way: “I have created a space that can almost be said to erase the boundary between inside and outside – a place where you become a little uncertain as to whether you have stepped into a work of art or into part of the museum. This uncertainty is important to me, as it encourages people to think and sense beyond the limits within which they are accustomed to function.” Therefore, Eliasson is obsessed with breaking all existing boundaries in people`s perception by creating unexpected, grandiose, and staggering works of art. Many critics claim that Eliasson finds only crazy people to work with him in his laboratory, and it seems legitimate. Only people with boundless fantasy and the possibility to dream as a 5-year old boy can tackle such projects as a fake sun or a huge rainbow made of glass. Nevertheless, it is Eliasson who leads this team of dreamers and who makes up most of these ideas. Enchanted by such common natural phenomena as light, sun, water, mist he reinvents them with the help of sciece. His ability to see beauty in the most unpredictable places is often attributed to his Icelandic origin. In the land where the shadows of the objects turn longer than the objects themselves it is quite easy to get lost in visual illusions. But Olafur Eliasson does not only know how to use these illusions he knows how to make other people feel the beauty and the temporality off this illusion which reminds real life so much. Bibliography  Fullerton, H. “Olafur Eliasson: Combining Beauty and Science in Contemporary Icelandic Art”. The Culture Trip, 2011. Retrieved from: http://theculturetrip.com/europe/iceland/articles/olafur-eliasson-combining-beauty-and-science-in-contemporary-icelandic-art/ Gibbons, F. “Tate Modern Awakes to Danes Rising Sun”. The Guardian. (2013)Retrieved from: http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2003/oct/16/arts.artsnews1 Gulstad, C. “Eliasson’s Room with a Rainbow View Brings Record Visitors to Aros”, The Art Newspaper, (2012). Jones, J. “Olafur Eliasson Conjures a Delightful Grotto of Lights and Wonder in Paris”, The Guardian, 2014. Retrieved from: http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/dec/17/olafur-eliasson-review-grotto-of-light-and-wonders Lancho, T. “Olafur Eliasson Launches Little Sun Project and Tate Blackouts at Tate Modern”, The Guardian, (2013). MIT Press Release. Olafur Eliasson, the Recipient of the Eugene McDermott Award in MIT, 2014. Retrieved from: http://artsatmit.org/mcdermott/files/McDermottEliassonMarch2014ResidencyPressReleaseFINAL.pdf Olafur Eliasson Official Website. Your Rainbow Panorama. Retrieved from: http://olafureliasson.net/archive/artwork/WEK100551/your-rainbow-panorama “Olafur Eliasson the Weather Project: About the Installation”. Tate Gallery. (2003). Retrieved from: http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/exhibition/unilever-series-olafur-eliasson-weather-project/olafur-eliasson-weather-project “Your Rainbow Panorama”. AAROS, 2014. Retrieved from: http://en.aros.dk/visit-aros/the-collection/your-rainbow-panorama/ Read More