Olafur Eliasson. A Renaissance spirit in the contemporary world

Ólafur Elíasson is an artist, designer, philosopher, builder, technician, ecologist, teacher. A Renaissance man in the 21st century. Passionate about art, physics, technology and technique, with his hands and eyes fixed on the green and blue of the woods and the sky.
He is probably known to the general public for The weather project (2003), a site specific installation for the Turbine Hall of the Tate Modern in London, visited by more than two million people, where he reconstructed a sun formed by 200 lamps behind a semicircular screen which was reflected in a system of mirrors.
He works with sculpture, painting, photography, video, installation and digital media. His art is guided by his interest in perception, movement, lived experience, his own feelings and those of the community. His art is not limited to the confines of museums and galleries, but involves the public through architectural projects, interventions in public spaces, actions of artistic, social and environmental education.
His studio is in Berlin and, not surprisingly, brings together a large group of craftsmen, architects, archivists, researchers, administrators, cooks, art historians and specialized technicians. He plays with natural elements (water and ice) in the idea of connection between man, nature and sustainability.

“I realized that we are fundamentally interconnected,” Elíasson told Studio Magazine. “We are united, through a multitude of relationships, with other beings, things, institutions, the ecosystem. By seeing our lives inextricably intertwined in a web that is our world, we are learning that we are also vulnerable and that we are not in complete control of everything. We act and interact in definite situations with uncertainty and undefined customs. By collectively exploring the world we can, I hope, make it livable for all species."

The search for him is slow, spread over several years, like the rhythms of nature.
Waterfall, for example, is a work inspired by the phenomenon in which the water of waterfalls, if pushed by a strong wind, flows from the bottom up. After photographing Icelandic waterfalls in 50 shots and translating them into the 1996 project The Waterfall series, two years later he presented Waterfall at the 11th Sydney Biennale: a six-metre-high fall of water from a closed circuit.
The same work ends, but perhaps will continue, in the end nature always finds a way, in 2016, when Waterfall is installed in the Grand Canal along the main visual axis of the Versailles Gardens.

In 1993's Beauty, a spotlight shines obliquely through a curtain of fine mist. As the experience of the visual effects generated by the interaction of water and light changes in response to the visitors' positions within the room, the artwork exists only in the meeting of the viewer's view and objects and is unique to each individual.

beauty

©photo Ela Bialkowska OKNO studio

The Glacier melt series also comes to life from 1999 to 2019; in 1999, Ólafur Elíasson photographed many glaciers in Iceland; this photographic series then translates into the work The glacier series. Twenty years later, the artist decides to return to Iceland to photograph the same glaciers again. A new work is born, the series The glacier melt 1999/2019, which combines thirty pairs of images from 1999 and 2019 to reveal the dramatic impact that global warming is having on our planet.

“I used natural phenomena taking them from nature as if this were a toolbox,” he said. “However, I don't think that nature can necessarily be interesting without the people who live in it. I'm not a radical ecologist, who thinks nature alone is important to itself, I think it's there for people. But we certainly have to teach ourselves and our children to protect it. In my work, I look for a balance. I do what I do for people, and I use nature as a medium, because it is able to speak to a very large number of individuals."... read the rest of the article»

Pubblicato il November 25, 2022

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