Olafur Eliasson
Olafur Eliasson is a renowned Danish-Icelandic artist, born in Copenhagen in 1967, known for creating immersive installations that engage viewers in contemplating their connection to the natural world. His work often incorporates elements such as light, vapor, and mirrors, using simple structures to evoke complex sensory experiences. One of his most famous pieces, The Weather Project, captivated over two million visitors at the Tate Modern in London, transforming perceptions of space and light through its innovative use of mirrors and mist.
Eliasson's artistic practice extends beyond the studio; he is also a committed social entrepreneur and humanitarian. He co-founded Little Sun, a social business providing solar-powered LED lamps to communities without electricity, aiming to enhance educational opportunities, particularly for disadvantaged children. His commitment to social issues is evident in his involvement with various global causes and initiatives, including serving as a Goodwill Ambassador for climate action for the United Nations.
His exhibitions, including In Real Life at the Tate and The Curious Desert in Qatar, showcase his multifaceted approach to art and its potential to inspire emotional and social change. Through his work, Eliasson invites individuals to reflect on their beliefs and assumptions, demonstrating the powerful intersection of art, public policy, and environmental awareness.
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Subject Terms
Olafur Eliasson
Conceptual artist
- Born: February 5, 1967
- Place of Birth: Copenhagen, Denmark
Education: Royal Academy of Arts
Significance: Olafur Eliasson's work seeks to encourage viewers to consider their place in and their understanding of the natural world. The artist has also embarked on humanitarian efforts to aid people in communities around the globe.
Background
Olafur Eliasson was born in Copenhagen, Denmark, in 1967. His parents were Icelanders who immigrated to Denmark in 1966. Eliasson's parents divorced when he was four. He lived with his mother and stepfather during the week, and spent his weekends with his father, who was a part-time painter. He spent some of his childhood in Iceland after his father returned to his homeland. He began drawing at a young age, but he had other interests as well. As a teenager, Eliasson was a Scandinavian break-dancing champion, performing with two friends as the Harlem Gun Crew.
From 1989 to 1995, he studied at the Royal Academy of Arts. He moved to Berlin, Germany, in 1995. Some of his early efforts were guerrilla-art interventions. For one of these, The Green River, he poured a nontoxic substance that biologists use to track currents into a river, turning it green. He gave up guerrilla art around 2001.
He founded Studio Olafur Eliasson in a former train depot in Berlin. He employed dozens of workers, including architects, carpenters, mathematicians, and technicians. The number varied with the nature and number of works Eliasson was developing. For example, in 2014, he employed ninety people in the studio. They dined together four days a week, sharing vegetarian lunches and conversation, and took turns washing the dishes. Also in 2014, he cofounded Studio Other Spaces, an art and architecture office, with architect Sebastian Behmann. This office developed works in public spaces and experimental building projects.
The studio accepted commissions from organizations and commercial clients. It also funded its work through book publishing and sales of lamps, photographs, and prints.
Life's Work
Eliasson's best-known work is The Weather Project, which he installed in the Turbine Hall of the Tate Modern gallery in London. He covered the ceiling with mirrors, installed hundreds of lightbulbs to create a half sun at the top of a wall, and installed a mist machine. The mirrors extended the size of the room and the sun, while the mist distorted the light and changed the perception of distance within the hall. More than two million people visited the work during the six months it was open in 2003. Visitors began lying on the floor to watch the mist and their own reflections in the mirrors on the ceiling. Somewhere along the way, people got together and began spelling out words with their bodies.
The Weather Project is an example of Eliasson's ideas about art and the viewer. The artist regards the experience of those visiting a work as a primary purpose of a piece. He has often used the word your in the titles of exhibitions, reminding the visitor that the experience of each person is unique and colored by individual experiences. This installation is also an example of his use of vapor and other means of distorting light.
The artist's works are often structurally simple. Many involve mirrors., such as Shadows travelling on the sea of the day, which consists of mirror pavilions he installed in the Qatari desert in 2022. One installation, Your Waste of Time, consisted entirely of blocks of ice that had broken off Icelandic glaciers. They were retrieved from a lake and shipped in a refrigerated hold to New York. The ice chunks sat in a refrigerated gallery for four months in 2013. Visitors simply observed the preserved ice out of its natural setting. Another installation, Your Sun Machine, consisted of an empty room. A large, round hole in the ceiling let the sun in. As the earth revolved, the sunlight struck different parts of the floor and walls. The light beam changed shape, from elliptical to round, and again elliptical. Your Engagement Sequence, a 2006 installation, featured a lightbulb in a small pergola at the center of a pool of water. A lever connected the light and the ramp on which visitors approached the pool. Each step on the ramp was transmitted through the lever to the water. The ripples caused by the footsteps were different for each person. These ripples caused waves of light to move on the walls.
The artist has also experimented with using all the visible colors of light. He has created a series of numbered circular paintings, which he calls color experiments. In 2023, recording artist Peter Gabriel used Colour experiment no. 114 as the art for the song "i/o."
Eliasson has had major solo exhibitions in museums around the world. His show In Real Life, which includes works from a twenty-year period, was exhibited in London at the Tate in 2019. It went on to the Guggenheim Bilbao in Spain in 2020. His Sometimes an underground movement is an illuminated bridge is a permanent installation at Houston's Museum of Fine Arts. The Curious Desert, an exhibition that opened in Qatar in 2023, encompassed two locations in the country. The indoor portion consisted of paintings and photographs displayed in the National Museum of Qatar in Doha. In the desert, he installed a dozen pavilions.
In 2024, his works were included in exhibitions in multiple museums in cities around the world. He also had a work in Future Ours, which was an ART 2030 and United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development public project in New York City. His work, You Are Solar Powered,
Eliasson wants people to slow down and reconsider their beliefs and assumptions. He believes this can bring about changes on an emotional level and spark political and social change. He believes that art has the potential to improve the world. To this end, Eliasson has also been active outside his studio, serving as both a teacher and a social entrepreneur. He became a professor at the Berlin University of the Arts, where he led an experimental program in arts education from 2009 to 2014. This program culminated in a book about art education.
The artist has a keen interest in public policy and often attends the World Economic Forum. He also has an interest in global issues and has championed causes around the world through his charity. He cofounded Little Sun in 2012 with engineer Frederik Ottesen. The social business works to provide solar-powered LED lamps to people in communities that do not have access to electricity. He wanted to give children—in particular impoverished girls in many countries near the equator—access to light to continue their education and reach their potential.
As an outgrowth of the staff vegetarian lunches, Studio Olafur Eliasson published a cookbook of sustainable vegetarian dishes in 2013. Other ventures have included stage works, such as directing the appearance of a ballet, Tree of Codes, in 2015.
Impact
Some of Eliasson's associates have said his philanthropy is an extension, or possibly an element, of his art. Studio Olafur Eliasson seamlessly blends creative efforts and social business. In some ways, the art opens the door to action. Many of his projects not only draw attention to issues, but they also offer solutions, such as the LED lights he designed for Little Sun. The United Nations Development Fund named him a Goodwill Ambassador for climate action and its sustainable development goals in 2019.
Personal Life
Eliasson married Marianne Krogh Jensen, a Danish art historian. The couple adopted a son and a daughter from Ethiopia. The marriage ended.
Eliasson and Jensen established a nongovernmental organization, 121ethiopia, to help children in Ethiopia. Much of this work focuses on children in orphanages and helping single mothers support their families.
Bibliography
Beauman, Ned. "Olafur Eliasson on How To Do Good Art." New York Times Style Magazine, 13 Nov. 2014, www.nytimes.com/2014/11/13/t-magazine/olafur-eliasson-interview-fondation-louis-vuitton.html. Accessed 9 Oct. 2024.
"Biography." Studio Olafur Eliasson, olafureliasson.net/biography. Accessed 9 Oct. 2024.
Cooke, Rachel. "Olafur Eliasson: 'I Am Not Special." Guardian, 21 June 2015, www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/jun/21/olafur-eliasson-i-am-not-special-interview-tree-of-codes-ballet-manchester. Accessed 9 Oct. 2024.
Gross, Michael Joseph. "The Falls Guy: Olafur Eliasson Has Seduced Mike Bloomberg with a Spectacle to Rival The Gates." New York, 8 June 2008, nymag.com/arts/art/features/47554/. Accessed 9 Oct. 2024.
"Home." 121ethiopia, www.121ethiopia.org/. Accessed 9 Oct. 2024.
"Olafur Eliasson." Artnet, www.artnet.com/artists/olafur-eliasson/. Accessed 9 Oct. 2024.
"Olafur Eliasson." Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, www.tanyabonakdargallery.com/artists/27-olafur-eliasson/. Accessed 9 Oct. 2024.
"Olafur Eliasson CV." Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, www.tanyabonakdargallery.com/usr/library/documents/main/artists/27/olafur-eliasson-s-cv‗2024.pdf. Accessed 9 Oct. 2024.
"Olafur Eliasson the Weather Project." Tate, www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/unilever-series/unilever-series-olafur-eliasson-weather-project. Accessed 9 Oct. 2024.
"Your Uncertain Archive." Studio Olafur Eliasson, www.olafureliasson.net/uncertain. Accessed 9 Oct. 2024.
Zarin, Cynthia. "Seeing Things: The Art of Olafur Eliasson." New Yorker, 13 Nov. 2006, www.newyorker.com/magazine/2006/11/13/seeing-things-2. Accessed 9 Oct. 2024.