1967 -
In 2003 he represented Denmark at the 50th Venice Biennale and in 2004 he was awarded the Nykredit Architecture Prize.
In 2013, together with Henning Larsen Architects, he received the Mies van der Rohe Award for their ''Harpa Concert Hall and Conference Center'' in Reykjavik, Iceland.
Icelandic-Danish artist known for sculptures and large-scale installation art. Eliasson's presentation of our communal experience of space, ambiguous materialization, and its constant state of flux is often derived from the juxtaposition of manmade and ephemeral elements. His interactions with natural phenomena such as light, water, air, and the environment have vastly dissolved the boundaries of what is considered traditional artistic medium.
In 1995 he established Studio Olafur Eliasson in Berlin, a laboratory for spatial research.
THE WEATHER PROJECT, LONDON, 2003.
The project was installed in 2003, at the London's Tate Modern Turbine Hall. Eliasson used humidifiers to create a fine mist in the air via a mixture of sugar and water, as well as a semicircular disc- reflected by the ceiling mirror to appear circular- made up of hundreds of monochromatic lamps which radiated yellow light. The ceiling of the hall was covered with a huge mirror, in which visitors could see themselves as tiny black shadows against a mass of orange light, symbolizing the sun.
This artwork was not created to create an illusion. Eliasson enforces his viewers to reconnect with the self, spurring reflection into their experiences within and relationship to the world at large. His work becomes a catalyst, which forwards the concept of individual agency and, at the same time, common experience.
The Weather Project showcased a thorough mastery of the components of the universe, in which Eliasson succeeded to hint at a truth, much bigger than the facts of the lamps, foil, and scaffolding. By creating and controlling something that we know is ultimately forever out of our hands, we get to glimpse that detachment and make it our own again.
OLAFUR ELIASSON
DENMARK
