Culture Etc.
Olafur Eliasson, Under the weather, 2022; Installation view: Olafur Eliasson: Your curious journey, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, 2024 © 2022 Olafur Eliasson.
Olafur Eliasson: Beyond the limits of perception
Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki welcomes a retrospective exhibition from one of contemporary art’s great ambassadors for climate consciousness and the capacity of art to affect change.
By Theo Macdonald
In Polish science-fiction writer Stanislaw Lem’s 1961 novel Solaris, about a crew of astronaut-scientists trying to communicate with a sentient ocean, Lem writes, “The human mind is only capable of absorbing a few things at a time […] We know, but cannot grasp, that above and below, beyond the limits of perception or imagination, thousands and millions of simultaneous transformations are at work, interlinked like a musical score by mathematical counterpoint. It has been described as a symphony in geometry, but we lack the ears to hear it.”
Icelandic-Danish artist Olafur Eliasson has spent more than thirty years developing innovative ways of making these invisible phenomena perceptible to the naked eye. To adopt Lem’s metaphor, Eliasson gives his audience ears.
Now, the celebrated and widely debated contemporary artist is about to have his first solo exhibition in Aotearoa. Olafur Eliasson: Your curious journey is at Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki from Saturday 7 December 2024 through Sunday 23 March 2025, and includes highlights from over thirty years of practice, as well as a new commission for the Gallery’s Te Ātea North Atrium.
For international art audiences, Eliasson’s hugely ambitious sculptural installations typify the post-object art ‘experiences’ that became globally renowned in the late 1990s. Iconic pieces like The weather project, a simulated sun installed at London’s Tate Modern in 2003, bring fantastic natural phenomena into the gallery environment. According to Natasha Conland, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki’s Senior Curator of Global Contemporary Art, an underlying theme in Eliasson’s intensely experienced artworks is “creating an awareness of our bodies, how we see, how we think, how we feel, and how that impacts how we behave with art in a museum and, in turn, in the world.”
This core inquiry is present even in early works such as Beauty, a spotlit curtain of mist, first exhibited in 1993 and included in Your curious journey. “People are deeply affected by Eliasson’s environments,” says Conland. “They engage directly, holistically, with the elements, and see things in a different way.”
Olafur Eliasson Beauty, 1993; Installation view: Olafur Eliasson: Nel tuo tempo, Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi, Florence, Italy, 2022. Photo: Ela Bialkowska, OKNO Studio. Courtesy of the artist; neugerriemschneider, Berlin; Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York / Los Angeles © 1993 Olafur Eliasson
In 1995, Eliasson established the spatial research laboratory Studio Olafur Eliasson, through which he works with highly skilled architects, technicians, archivists and even behavioural scientists, to build and extend his practice’s capacity to produce these perspective-shifting experiences. In parallel to this development, his work has moved subtly into the space of climate awareness. In 2019, the United Nations Development Programme appointed Eliasson United Nations Goodwill Ambassador for climate action and the Sustainable Development Goals.
This priority is apparent through activist works like Ice Watch, a temporary installation in which blocks of glacial ice melt in public spaces as “a direct and tangible experience of the reality of melting arctic ice”.
“He’s careful not to define these artworks’ sole ‘job’ as raising climate consciousness, because he understands that not everybody will get that from the artworks.” says Conland. “His thinking is that once you activate someone sensorially, you have got a mobile, alive mind that can then go back into the world with a heightened capacity to accept change and to accept the ability to confront difficult issues. He is a spokesperson for the capacity of art.”
One highlight of Your curious journey is Still river, a cousin to Ice Watch featuring five metre-square cubes of frozen water sourced from a nearby river, in this case, the Waikato, which Conland notes is not only hugely culturally and historically significant but also Auckland’s main source of drinking water — as of 2022, Watercare has consent to draw 300 million litres of water a day from the Waikato.
“Still river is such a good example of how Eliasson’s work operates,” says Conland. “When it’s frozen you’ve got this ability to see directly and engage your perception of what that water looks like. Does it look clean? What do I think the colour of clean is? How do I feel about drinking the Waikato? Who owns the Waikato?”
Olafur Eliasson Still river, 2016 (detail); Installation view: Long Museum, Shanghai, 2016. Photo: Anders Sune Berg. Courtesy of the artist; neugerriemschneider, Berlin; Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York / Los Angeles © 2016 Olafur Eliasson
Although Eliasson’s reputation might suggest a hands-off approach, Conland says he and his studio have worked with the Gallery “on every imaginable detail you can think of.” To reduce the carbon footprint of his practice, a growing problem in the international traffic of artwork, the artworks in Your curious journey have all been sea-freighted to Aotearoa and across land they have been transported by train. The Gallery’s arrangement with Eliasson’s Studio requires it to continually report back the carbon footprint of anything produced for the exhibition, including print matter and merchandise.
Arriving at the Gallery, you’ll see the gorgeous and optically playful mobile Under the weather in the Te Ātea North Atrium. Entering Your curious journey, you’ll walk through Yellow corridor, “an artificial experience of colour which will literally change your eyes”, then journey into a labyrinth of works on perception and geometry, gradually coming to pieces looking more into nature, featuring moss, glaciers, and, finally, Still river.
“I don’t want to sound cheesy,” concludes Conland, “but Your curious journey is an eye-opening, body-opening, kinesthetic experience.” A symphony in geometry.
Olafur Eliasson: Your curious journey is at Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki 7 Dec through 23 March. Visit www.aucklandartgallery.com to book tickets.