Take your Time at MoMA
Last week I was invited at the opening of Olafur Eliasson “Take your time” exhibition at the MoMA.
The Marron Atrium was filled by artists, collectors, musicians and a traditional jazz band playing American tunes under a wildly swinging electric fan hanging from the ceiling above visitors and a chic Chinese dumplings buffet.
The exhibition is the first comprehensive survey in the United States of works by works of the artist, whose immersive environments, sculptures, and photographs elegantly recreate the extremes of landscape and atmosphere in his native Scandinavia, while foregrounding the sensory experience of the work itself. I must say it was quite of a relaxing experience.
Eliasson presents perception as it is lived in the world. Because people do not stand in front of his works as if before a picture, but rather inside them, actively engaged, his installations posit the very act of looking as a social experience.
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 elements such as water, stone, and moss to shift the viewer’s perception of place and self. By transforming the gallery into a hybrid space of nature and culture, Eliasson prompts an intensive engagement with the world and offers a fresh consideration of everyday life.
The large-scale immersive environments and installations elegantly recreate the extremes of landscape and atmosphere in his native Iceland. In his work, Eliasson recontextualizes elements such as light, water, ice, fog, stone, and moss to create unique situations that shift the viewer’s perception of place and self. By transforming the galleries into hybrid spaces of nature and culture, Eliasson prompts an intensive engagement with the world and offers a fresh consideration of everyday life.
The exhibition’s 38 works include 14 of those featured in the originating exhibition first presented at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art as well as 24 additional works, six of which were uniquely designed for this exhibition. Drawing from public and private collections worldwide, the exhibition will be on view at MoMA and P.S.1. from April 20 through June 30, 2008.
The exhibition is organized by Madeleine Grynsztejn, former Elise S. Haas Senior Curator of Painting and Sculpture at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art , where the exhibition originated. In New York, it is coordinated and expanded by Roxana Marcoci, Curator, Department of Photography; and Klaus Biesenbach, Chief Curator, Department of Media, The Museum of Modern Art.
Probing the cognitive aspects of what it means to see, Eliasson creates complex optical phenomena using simple, makeshift technical devices: Colored bulbs bathe a room in yellow light, turning everything inside monochrome; strobes illuminate a thin curtain of falling water, causing the eye to “freeze†the droplets in midair; kaleidoscopes produce colorful prismatic effects; mirrors reflect spotlight beams, revealing an artificial dimension. By making visible the mechanics of his works and laying bare the artifice of the illusion, Eliasson points to the elliptical relationship between reality, perception, and representation.
Inspired by the meteorology and terrain of his native Scandinavia, Eliasson often recontextualizes natural phenomena, as exemplified by his wall of reindeer moss at MoMA and indoor rainbow and upward-flowing waterfall at P.S.1. In his works these sights appear natural, yet invariably they are artificially induced. Even as his work fosters wonder, it also emphasizes the ways in which cultural institutions mediate our perception of natural phenomena.
The monumental new installation Take your time (2008), one of the six new works Eliasson created for the New York presentation, takes its name from the exhibition’s title. A circular mirror, 40 feet in diameter and weighing 600 pounds, is mounted to the ceiling of P.S.1’s largest gallery at an angle and rotates at one revolution per minute, destabilizing viewers’ perception of space as they pass
underneath it. (See photo gallery below)
Eliasson presents perception as it is lived in the world. Because people do not stand in front of his works as if before a picture, but rather inside them, actively engaged, his installations posit the very act of looking as a social experience. The fan’s ever-changing, unpredictable arcs provide a striking metaphor for perception in motion. hanging ventilatorIEliasson engages in an ongoing exploration of subjectivity, reflection, and the fluid boundary between nature and culture, revealing the degree to which reality is constructed and helping us to reflect more critically on our experience of it. Via Artpedia News
Joelle’s Tips:
The Exibition:
Take your time: Olafur Eliasson
April 20–June 30, 2008
