
Olafur Eliasson
Olafur Eliasson (Icelandic: Ólafur Elíasson; born 5 February 1967)[1] is an Icelandic–Danish artist known for sculptured and large-scaled installation art employing elemental materials such as light, water, and air temperature to enhance the viewer's experience.
This is an Icelandic name. The last name is patronymic, not a family name; this person is referred to by the given name Olafur.
Olafur Eliasson
In 1995, Olafur established Studio Olafur Eliasson in Berlin, a laboratory for spatial research. In 2014, Olafur and his long-time collaborator – German architect Sebastian Behmann – founded Studio Other Spaces, an office for architecture and art.
Olafur represented Denmark at the 50th Venice Biennale in 2003 and later that year installed The Weather Project, which has been described as "a milestone in contemporary art",[2] in the Turbine Hall of Tate Modern, London.
Olafur has engaged in a number of public projects, 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 Trædal Thorsen; and The New York City Waterfalls, commissioned by Public Art Fund in 2008. Olafur also created the Breakthrough Prize trophy. Like much of his work, the sculpture explores the common ground between art and science. It is molded into the shape of a toroid, recalling natural forms found from black holes and galaxies to seashells and coils of DNA.[3]
Olafur was a professor at the Berlin University of the Arts from 2009 to 2014 and has been an adjunct professor at the Alle School of Fine Arts and Design in Addis Ababa since 2014. His studio is based in Berlin, Germany.[4][5]
Selected works and projects[edit]
Beauty (1993)[edit]
Nadine Wojcik, after attending the In real life exhibition in 2019, dubbed Beauty (1993) a "simple yet powerful water installation that evokes a rainbow via spotlights.”[2] Anna Souter called the work "a reminder of the intensely fragile beauty of the natural world and its elements. [...] it’s simply and superbly beautiful".[17]
Ventilator pieces[edit]
Early works by Olafur consist of oscillating electric fans hanging from the ceiling. Ventilator (1997) swings back and forth and around, rotating on its axis.[18] Quadrible light ventilator mobile (2002–2007) is a rotating electrically powered mobile comprising a searchlight and four fans blowing air around the exhibition room and scanning it with the light cone.[19] In a 2008 review of the Take Your Time retrospective (at the Museum of Modern Art), Peter Schjeldahl dubbed Ventilator "a witty finesse of the MOMA atrium’s space-splurging grandiosity"
Exhibitions[edit]
Olafur had his first solo show was with Nicolaus Schafhausen in Cologne in 1993, before moving to Berlin in 1994.[6] In 1996, Olafur had his first show in the United States at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery. The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) organized Olafur's first major survey in the United States Take Your Time: Olafur Eliasson, from September 2007 to February 2008.[59] 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.[60] Following its San Francisco debut, the exhibit embarked on an international tour to the Museum of Modern Art, and P.S.1. Contemporary Art Center, New York, 2008; the Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, Texas, 2008–2009; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, 2009; and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney 2009–2010.
He has also had major solo exhibitions at, among others, Kunsthaus Bregenz, Musée d’Art Moderne, Paris, and ZKM (Center for Art and Media), Karlsruhe (2001); Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt (2004); Hara Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo (2006); the Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, Ishikawa (2009); the Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin (2010) and the Langen Foundation, Museum Insel Hombroich, Neuss (2015). Olafur has also appeared in numerous group exhibitions, including the São Paulo Biennial and the Istanbul Biennial (1997), Venice Biennale (1999, 2001 and 2005), and the Carnegie International (1999), Palace of Versailles (2016), The Parliament of Possibilities at Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art (2016-2017).
From July 2019 to through to January 2020, Tate Modern showed the exhibition In real life.[61]
Olafur's work is held in the following permanent collections:
Awards[edit]
The Spiral Pavilion, conceived in 1999 for the Venice Biennale and today on display at Kunsthalle Bielefeld, brought Olafur Eliasson the Benesse Prize by the Benesse Corporation.[66] In 2004, Olafur won the Nykredit Architecture Prize[67] and the Eckersberg Medal for painting.[68] The following year he was awarded the Prince Eugen Medal for sculpture[69] and in 2006, the Crown Prince Couple's Culture Prize.[70] In 2006, he received the Austrian Frederick Kiesler Prize for Architecture and the Arts.[71] In 2007, he was awarded the first Joan Miró Prize by the Joan Miró Foundation.[72]
In 2010, Olafur was the recipient of a Quadriga award. He returned his award one year later after it was revealed that Vladimir Putin would be recognized in 2011.[73] In October 2013, he was honored with the Goslarer Kaiserring.[74][75] That same year, Olafur and Henning Larsen Architects were recipients of the Mies van der Rohe Award for their Harpa Concert Hall and Conference Center in Reykjavik, Iceland.
In 2014, Olafur was the recipient of the $100,000 Eugene McDermott Award in the Arts at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology). The prize is considered an investment in the recipient's future creative work, rather than a prize for a particular project or lifetime of achievement. The awardee becomes an artist in residence at MIT, studying and teaching for a period of time.[76]
On the occasion of a state visit to Germany in June 2013, the President of Iceland, Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson, visited Studio Olafur Eliasson in Berlin.[77]
Brazilian filmmaker Karim Aïnouz's documentary piece, Domingo,[78] shot from his encounter with Olafur during the 17th Videobrasil Festival, had its world premiere at Rio International Film Festival] in 2014,[79] and was released on DVD in 2015.
Personal life[edit]
In 2003, Olafur married the Danish art historian Marianne Krogh Jensen, whom he met when she curated the Danish Pavilion for the 1997 São Paulo Art Biennial.[6] They adopted both their son (in 2003) and their daughter (in 2006) in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The family had lived in a house designed by architect Andreas Lauritz Clemmensen[80] in Hellerup near Copenhagen,[6] but Olafur and Jensen are no longer married. Olafur currently lives and works in Berlin. Olafur speaks Icelandic, Danish, German, and English.[6] He also has a younger half-sister named Victoria Eliasdottir who is a chef.[4]
On 22 September 2019, Olafur was appointed as Goodwill Ambassador by the United Nations Development Programme "to advocate for urgent action on climate change and sustainable development goals."[81] In the context of his appointment, Olafur emphasized the need to stay positive: "I also think it's important not to lose sight of what is actually going quite well. There is reason for hope. I believe in hope as such and I'm generally a positive person. And when you think about it: it has never been better to be a young African girl, for instance."[82]