Dane and able
Words | Sophy Grimshaw The work of Danish installation artist Olafur Eliasson is so extraordinary that he can even appear to control the weather: from creating false sunsets and waterfalls to encasing a BMW in ice IF YOU DON’T RECOGNISE the name of Olafur Eliasson, you may well recognise some of his ambitious installation art [...]
Words | Sophy Grimshaw
The work of Danish installation artist
Olafur Eliasson is so extraordinary that he can even appear to
control the weather: from creating false sunsets and waterfalls
to encasing a BMW in ice
IF YOU DON’T RECOGNISE the
name of Olafur Eliasson, you may
well recognise some of his ambitious
installation art works. Famously, he was
the artist responsible for The Weather
Project, literally a feat of smoke and mirrors in the Turbine
Hall of the Tate Modern, London, and Double Sunset, for which
he created the illusion of there being two suns in the sky in
Utrecht in The Netherlands.
Eliasson was born in Copenhagen in 1967 to an Icelandic
family and graduated from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine
Arts in 1995. Currently his work on display includes four largescale
artificial waterfalls in New York’s East River, which will be
in place until the end of next month.
Known for dreaming big in experimental art and for the
high level of engineering skill he brings to it, Eliasson is not
above accepting commercial commissions. He created a
complex frozen structure subtly to showcase a BMW and has
been the brains behind window displays for Louis Vuitton.
Eliasson put the money from the Vuitton commission towards
the charity he has founded, 121 Ethiopia (www.121ethiopia.org).
It funds the building of orphanages in Addis Ababa, where
Eliasson and his wife adopted their two children.
Now a new book, Studio Olafur Eliasson: An Encyclopedia –
by Philip Ursprung, professor of modern and contemporary art
at the University of Zurich and an early champion of Eliasson
– brings together photographs of Eliasson’s extraordinary work
and the stories behind it.
Studio Olafur Eliasson: An Encyclopedia is out now
(£80, Taschen, www.taschen.com)
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The Things You Don’t See That You Don’t See, 2001 Eliasson folded a vast two-dimensional sheet of cardboard in such a way as to create this threedimensional tunnel. |
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The Weather Project, 2003 -2004 Fog machines and a giant ‘sun’ made from hundreds of lamps were part of Eliasson’s famous ‘weather project’ in the Turbine Hall of London’s Tate Modern. The suggestion of recreating the weather, rather than movie-effect realism, was the goal. Eliasson replaced part of the ceiling with mirrors – many visitors lay down to see themselves reflected. |
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Waterfall, 2004 At a gallery in Aarhus, Denmark, Eliasson mimics the rhythm and flow of a natural waterfall using scaffolding. Art works that use mechanics to recreate natural phenomena are a recurring theme for Eliasson. |
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Your Mobile Expectations, 2007 Expectations, 2007 This cover both displays and hides a BMW H2R hydrogen car. One layer emits yellow light; on top of that are steel rods and mirrors, onto which 2,000 litres of water are poured and immediately frozen into icicles. |
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Circumscription, 2004 Two spiral staircases that interlock, creating the continuous loop of a double helix, in the courtyard of an office building in Munich, Germany. To help the building process, a laser projector was used to show the spiral shape Eliasson’s team were working towards. The result is carefully engineered to balance on one single base point. |
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Your Waste of Time, 2006 Eliasson brought blocks of ice weighing six tonnes all the way from Iceland to display in sub-zero temperatures at a German gallery. The artist and his team took them from the Vatnajökull glacier, parts of which formed in 1,200 AD. |
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Berlin Colour Sphere, 2006 (detail) Eliasson has an interest in mirrors and prisms, through which colours can be refracted in a number of ways. “Our experience of colour is not a purely biological matter,” says the artist. “It also depends on how our vision has been cultivated. Your notion of red may be different from mine.” |
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