Istanbul Modern is set to showcase an extensive exhibition highlighting the 30-year career of the renowned Icelandic-Danish artist Olafur Eliasson. Known for his large-scale installations that blend art, nature and technology, Eliasson challenges our perception of reality. Sponsored by Eczacıbaşı Group and VitrA, the exhibition, "Olafur Eliasson: Your Unexpected Encounter," will mark the artist's debut in Türkiye, opening on June 7.
The exhibition, curated by Öykü Özsoy Sağnak, Nilay Dursun and Ümit Mesci, will feature nearly 40 works, including new productions. Central themes of Eliasson's artistic practice, such as water, light, color, perception, movement, geometry and the environment, will be explored. Eliasson's innovative use of light, water and temperature in his installations enhances the viewer's experience, while his interdisciplinary approach bridges art and science, addressing urgent environmental issues.
Born in Copenhagen in 1967, Eliasson spent much of his childhood in Iceland, whose dramatic landscapes deeply influenced his artistic vision. He studied at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, where he began to experiment with light and space. During his studies, he worked as an assistant in Christian Eckhart’s studio in Brooklyn, delving into Gestalt approaches. After graduating in 1995, Eliasson collaborated with architect and geometry expert Einar Thorsteinn, creating installations that mimic nature through optical illusions. Eliasson has been influenced by artists like Bruce Nauman, James Turrell and Robert Irwin and has represented Denmark at the 50th Venice Biennale in 2003 with "The Blind Pavilion."
With numerous major exhibitions and projects worldwide since the 1990s, Eliasson remains one of the most influential contemporary artists, continuing to inspire and provoke thought through his visionary works.
Olafur Eliasson's work is rooted in the concept of "seeing yourself seeing," inviting viewers to become aware of their own perception and how it shapes their experience of the world. His installations often create environments where viewers can engage with natural phenomena in novel ways, fostering a heightened sense of awareness and presence. In an interview with Tate curator Mark Godfrey, Eliasson explained, "You'd not just be having an experience, but conscious of having that experience. You would be made self-aware by the set-up of his work, of that experience of looking."
For Eliasson, changing the world means changing the way we experience it. He aims to capture the essence of nothingness through the formation of a rainbow, as seen in one of his early works, "Beauty." This installation relies on three fundamental components: the eye, angle and light. Without the eye, there is no angle, and without the angle, there is no rainbow. Eliasson emphasizes that your neighbor cannot see your rainbow because their eye is in a different place. The rainbow’s existence is contingent on your presence, highlighting the personal nature of perception and experience.
Through his art, Eliasson challenges us to become more conscious of our surroundings and our role in shaping our perception of reality, making his work both transformative and deeply personal.
The Weather Project: One of Olafur Eliasson's most iconic works, "The Weather Project," was installed in the Turbine Hall of Tate Modern, London, as part of the Unilever Series in 2003. This installation featured a massive artificial sun created using monofrequency lamps and a ceiling covered with mirrors. Humidifiers generated a fine mist in the air, complementing the half-circle disk that emitted a yellow light, creating a sublime and immersive environment that evoked the unpredictable nature of weather. The ceiling mirrors allowed visitors to see themselves as small black silhouettes against the glowing orange light, enhancing the sense of scale and wonder.
Many visitors engaged with the installation by lying on their backs, gazing up at their reflections and the artificial sun. Art critic Brian O’Doherty described this phenomenon as visitors being "viewers, intoxicated with their own narcissism, wonder how to fly into the sky. "
"The Weather Project" not only highlighted the interplay between urban environments and our experience of nature but also became a social and interactive space for public gatherings and spontaneous performances. The installation, which was on view for six months and attracted two million visitors, stands as one of Eliasson's most successful and celebrated works.
New York City Waterfallers: Olafur Eliasson's notable public art project, created in collaboration with the Public Art Fund, featured a series of man-made waterfalls along New York City's East River. One of the waterfalls was installed beneath the Brooklyn Bridge. This ambitious project ran from June 26 to Oct. 13, 2008, and cost $15.5 million, making it the most expensive public art installation since Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s "The Gates" in Central Park.
Olafur Eliasson's installation "Beauty" has been described by art critics as a "simple yet powerful water installation that evokes a rainbow using spotlights." Art writer and curator Anna Souter characterized the work as "a reminder of the extremely fragile beauty of the natural world and its elements." This piece exemplifies Eliasson's talent for transforming basic natural phenomena into profound visual experiences, encouraging viewers to reflect on their perception of nature and its delicate balance.
A Riverbed Inside the Museum: In 2014-2015, Olafur Eliasson created an installation titled "A Riverbed Inside the Museum" at Denmark's Louisiana Museum of Modern Art. He transformed the gallery space into a landscape using natural rocks, soil and water to construct a riverbed. This immersive installation invited visitors to experience the raw elements of nature within the confines of a museum, challenging traditional boundaries between indoor and outdoor environments.
Room for One Color: In many of Olafur Eliasson's works, such as "Room for One Color," he employs mono-frequency, low-pressure sodium lamps that emit a very narrow frequency band of yellow light at 589 nanometers. This transforms the environment, making all colors except variations of yellow and black disappear. Over time, due to chromatic adaptation to the ambient light, even the yellowness seems to fade, leaving viewers with an experience akin to living in a black-and-white world. Curator and historian Katy Barrett described this as "an oddly distressing experience to lose your sense of color nuance in this way."
Eliasson leverages the science of color and perception to create art experiences that provoke thought and contemplation. He explains:
“It makes us aware of the limits of our senses and helps us to see the relativity of our color perception. Understanding how we see color can make us reconsider how we constitute the world. By reducing experience to the minimum, the monochrome allows us to reflect on what is happening when we perceive something and how perception is also a type of world-making. For a moment, we can imagine what it might be like to become color-blind or another species of animal or even more radically other. What strange, new worlds might emerge then?”
