Tomorrow, on 20 August 2014 Louisiana Museum of Modern Art opens its doors for the first solo exhibition of the Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson. The main work in the exhibition, a giant landscape, will unfold throughout the South Wing of the museum in one great sweep as a major intervention in the museum’s usual administration of art in space, affording the viewer the opportunity to think about the aesthetic experience as more than just the encounter between the visitor and works on the floor or walls.
Although Olafur Eliasson’s stone landscape may look like a stress-test of Louisiana’s physical capacity, it is a manifestation of the fundamental idea of the museum: to subject itself to something that both challenges the expectations of everyday life and puts it into perspective. In this case the empty landscape can perhaps restore to us a time and space purged of information and meaning. We can breathe for a moment; no one expects anything special from us – we are in an agenda-free zone.
Olafur Eliasson's solo exhibition at Louisiana is site-specific and engages with the museum’s unique identity. The exhibition consists of three sections that each thematize the encounter between Eliasson’s art and Louisiana as a place. The central work, Riverbed (2014), is based on the unique connection between nature, architecture and art that characterizes the museum. Transforming the entire South Wing into a rocky landscape, Eliasson focuses on inhabiting space in a new way and inserts new patterns of movement into the museum.
This sculptural approach to the body’s movement in space is also at the heart of three recent film works presented in The Hall Gallery,
- Your embodied garden, 2013. In Your embodied garden Eliasson explores a Chinese garden in Suzhou through the minimal movements of the choreographer Steen Koerner.
- Movement microscope, 2011. In Movement microscope we follow a group of dancers in Olafur Eliasson’s studio on what is otherwise an ordinary working day.
- Innen Stadt Aussen, 2010. In Innen Stadt Aussen we get a double portrait of Berlin in motion.
The third station of the exhibition is the Model room (2003), an installation that opens a window into Eliasson’s laboratory, revealing the unbroken flow between experiment, process and finished work that distinguishes his method as an artist.
The model room in the North Wing of the museum is in constant development for new models/projects are constantly being added. Eliasson has developed the comprehensive collection of geometrical models in close collaboration with the Icelandic artist Einar Thorsteinn. The model room is a gaze into the artist’s intellectual workshop.
Where.- Louisiana Museum of Modern Art. Gl. STRANDVEJ 13. 3050 HUMLEBÆK. Denmark.
When.- From August 20th, 2014 to January 4, 2015.