A view of things to come by Olafur Eliasson
02/03/2018.
Elvira González Gallery [Madrid] Spain, 13.02>14.04.2018
metalocus, INÉS OÑATE
metalocus, INÉS OÑATE
Description of project by Olafur Eliasson
Galería Elvira González is pleased to announce its third solo exhibition, A view of things to come, by Olafur Eliasson on February 13th, 2018. The exhibition will bring together recent work in which the Icelandic-Danish artist explores the human perception of temporality and movement through the spatial interaction between the viewer and the artworks.
According to the artist’s words: "A view of things to come gives us a view of ourselves from without, and to see yourself from the outside is to see yourself as part of the world. You see that being in space makes a difference, that you have responsibility. Before we act, we have an idea. But before the idea, there is a space – the space where the known and the unknown meet. It’s uncertain, unstructured, and open. This is where we realise that reality is relative –that we can change what is real– and we see a view of things to come".
Eliasson talks about his work as experimental set-ups, ranging from photography, sculpture, drawing and video, to major art commissions in public spaces and buildings.
Spanning his artistic career, from the early 90s and onwards, the artist has made environmental issues and social awareness central to his creative output. Consequently, in 2012, Eliasson launched Little Sun in collaboration with solar engineer Frederik Ottesen, a social project with the mission of bringing sustainable and clean energy to regions without electricity in sub-Saharan Africa.
Olafur Eliasson (Copenhagen, 1967) studied at the Royal Academy of the Arts in Copenhagen between 1989 and 1995. He represented Denmark in the 2003 Venice Biennale and has exhibited his work at numerous international museums. His work is part of private and public collections such as the Solomon R. Guggenheim museum in New York, The Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) in Los Angeles and Tate Modern in London, where his seminal work The weather project was exhibited. Eliasson lives and works in Berlin and Copenhagen.
Eliasson represented Denmark at the 50th Venice Biennale in 2003 and later that year installed The weather project at Tate Modern, London. Take your time: Olafur Eliasson, a survey exhibition organised by SFMOMA in 2007, travelled until 2010 to various venues, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York.
As professor at the Universität der Künste Berlin, Eliasson founded the Institut für Raumexperimente (Institute of Space Experiments) in 2009, an innovative model of arts education. In 2012, he launched Little Sun, a solar-powered lamp developed together with the engineer Frederik Ottesen to improve the lives of the approximately 1.6 billion people worldwide without access to electricity. Harpa Reykjavik Concert Hall and Conference Centre, for which he created the façade in collaboration with Henning Larsen Architects, was awarded the Mies van der Rohe Award 2013.
Verklighetsmaskiner (Reality machines) at t he Moderna Museet in Stockholm in 2015, became the museum’s most visited show by a living artist. In 2016 Eliasson created a series of interventions for the palace and gardens of Versailles, including an enormous artificial waterfall that cascaded into the Grand Canal.
His other projects include Studio Other Spaces, an international office for art and architecture which he founded in Berlin in 2014 with architect Sebastian Behmann; and Little Sun, a social business and global project providing clean, affordable light and encouraging sustainable development, with engineer Frederik Ottesen.