Olafur Eliasson
dal 30/4/2009 al 12/9/2009
Segnalato da
30/4/2009
Olafur Eliasson
Museum of Contemporary Art MCA, Chicago
Take your time. This is the first comprehensive survey in the United States of works by Olafur Eliasson, whose immersive environments, sculptures, and photographs elegantly recreate the extremes of landscape and atmosphere in his native Scandinavia. Drawn from collections worldwide, the presentation spans over fifteen years of his career. His constructions, at once eccentric and highly geometric, use multicolored washes, focused projections of light, mirrors, and elements such as water, stone, and moss to shift the viewer's perception of place and self.
Take your time: Olafur Eliasson is the first comprehensive survey in the United States of works by Olafur Eliasson, whose immersive environments, sculptures, and photographs elegantly recreate the extremes of landscape and atmosphere in his native Scandinavia. Drawn from collections worldwide, the presentation spans over fifteen years of Eliasson's career. His constructions, at once eccentric and highly geometric, use multicolored washes, focused projections of light, mirrors, and natural elements such as water, stone, and moss to shift the viewer's perception of place and self, foregrounding the sensory experience of each work. By transforming the gallery into a hybrid space of nature and culture, Eliasson prompts an intense engagement with the world and offers a fresh consideration of everyday life.
Take your time: Olafur Eliasson is organized by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson (b. 1967) creates formally diverse
works that are, to use his own words, “devices for the experience
of reality,” provoking a heightened level of enjoyment and engagement
that is profoundly felt. Materials found in the natural landscape—light, air,
water, moss—are put to the service of artworks that are less objects than
experiences. Nature merges with artifice in scenarios that clearly expose the
means by which they operate. In this way Eliasson’s art is in equal parts
wondrous in impact and transparent in structure.
The artist has carefully designed this exhibition as a journey through related,
consecutive
encounters unfurling in direct response to each visitor’s
unique trajectory. Impressions of temperature, wind, and humidity engage
multiple senses, going far beyond our exclusively visual involvement
with more traditional forms of art.
Throughout this exhibition we are called
upon to engage overtly with the work at a physiological and even kinetic
level, so much so that we actually contribute to its realization by endowing
these immersive environments with our own singular responses,
afterimages, and physical movements.
To the degree that we actively engage with the work, we come to a heightened
sense of perceiving and doing. “Seeing yourself seeing” is how Eliasson
describes this state of self-awareness and reflection, and it is his art’s ultimate
goal. It is a condition of creative involvement that the artist hopes may be
subsequently
carried by each of us out into the larger world so as to better act
on our own lives and circumstances. In keeping with this idea, the exhibition
title, Take your time, invites you to actively shape your experience of the
show and assume greater responsibility for your present and future role in
personal and civic life.
—Madeleine Grynsztejn, MCA Pritzker Director
Image: Beauty, 1993. Installation view at AROS Aarhus Kunstmuseum, 2004; Collection Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles with funds provided by Paul Frankel; photo: Poul Pedersen; © 2009 Olafur Eliasson
Media Relations
Erin Baldwin Tel 312.397.3828 Mail ebaldwin@mcachicago.org
Museum of Contemporary Art
220 East Chicago Avenue - Chicago
Museum Hours
Tuesday 10 am - 8 pm
Wednesday through Sunday 10 am - 5 pm
Monday Closed
Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's Day: Closed
Admission is FREE all day on Tuesdays year round.