Olafur Eliasson (born 1967) is a Danish-Icelandic artist known for sculptures and large-scale installation art employing elemental materials such as light, water, and air temperature to enhance the viewer's experience. In
1995 he established
Studio Olafur Eliasson in
Berlin, a laboratory for spatial research. Eliasson represented
Denmark at the 50th
Venice Biennale in
2003 and later that year installed
The Weather Project in the
Turbine Hall of
Tate Modern,
London. Eliasson has engaged in a number of projects in public space, 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 Thorsen; and
The New York City Waterfalls, commissioned by
Public Art Fund in 2008. Olafur Eliasson, born in
Copenhagen in 1967 to
Icelandic parents, studied at the
Royal Danish Academy of
Fine Arts between
1989 and 1995. In 2004, Eliasson told Berlin magazine 032c that his father was also an artist; in the same interview he also said that at one time he considered his "break-dancing" during the mid-1980s to be his first artworks. In
1990, when he was awarded a travel budget by the Royal Danish Academy of Arts, Eliasson went to
New York where he started working as a studio assistant. He 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.
First located in a warehouse right next door to the
Hamburger Bahnhof, the studio moved to a former brewery in
Prenzlauer Berg in 2008. In
1996, Eliasson started working with
Einar Thorsteinn, an architect and geometry expert 25 years his senior as well as a former friend of
Buckminster Fuller's. The first piece they created called 8900054, was a stainless-steel dome 30 feet (
9.1 m) wide and 7 feet (
2.1 m) high, designed to be seen as if it were growing from the ground. Though the effect is an illusion, the mind has a hard time believing that the structure is not part of a much grander one developing from deep below the surface. Thorsteinn's knowledge of geometry and space has been integrated into Eliasson'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), 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). Today, Studio Olafur Eliasson is a laboratory for spatial research that employs a team of c
. 30 architects, engineers, craftsmen, and assistants who work together to conceptualize, test, engineer, and construct installations, sculptures, large-scale projects, and commissions. As professor at
Universität der Künste Berlin, Olafur Eliasson founded the
Institute for Spatial Experiments (
Institut für Raumexperimente, IfREX), which opened within his studio building in
April 2009. Eliasson had his first solo show with
Nicolaus Schafhausen in Cologne in 1993, before moving to Berlin in
1994. In 1996, Eliasson had his first show in the
United States at
Tanya Bonakdar Gallery.
The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (
SFMOMA) organized Eliasson's first major survey in the United States
Take Your Time: Olafur Eliasson, on view from
September 8, 2007 to
February 24, 2008. Curated by the director of the
Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago,
Madeleine Grynsztejn (then Elise S.
Haas Senior Curator of
Painting and Sculpture at SFMOMA), in close collaboration with the artist, the major survey spanned the artist's career from 1993 and 2007. The exhibit included site-specific installations, large-scale immersive environments, freestanding sculpture, photography, and special commissions seen through a succession of interconnected rooms and corridors. The museum's skylight bridge was turned into an installation titled One-way colour tunnel.
- published: 20 Sep 2011
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