FX – August 2019

011

REPORTER

MARÍA DEL PILAR GARCÍA AYENSA/ STUDIO OLAFUR ELIASSON. 2010 OLAFUR ELIASSON

Olafur Eliasson: In Real Life

11 July 2019 – 5 January 2020

Tate Modern

tate.org.uk

WORDS BY

SOPHIE TOLHURST

THE TATE MODERN is hosting a

comprehensive survey of the Danish-Icelandic

artist, Olafur Eliasson, covering the many

different themes his work has explored since

the early Nineties. The works range from earlier

projects such as Moss Wall (1994), made with

lichen native to Eliasson’s homeland Iceland, to

more recent experiments with colour, light and

geometry, such as Your Spiral View (2002) and

Your Uncertain Shadow (Colour) from 2010,

where Eliasson plays with perception and

participation to engender a feeling of ‘seeing

yourself sensing’.

For the recent Ice Watch he imported real

glacial ice from Greenland to the open space

outside the Tate Modern, while architectural

projects including Fjordenhus, an office

completed in Denmark last year, take the

artist’s practice into the built environment. A

number of Eliasson’s social initiatives will also

be featured within the space, such as the Little

Sun project, which provides solar-powered

lamps and chargers to communities without

electricity, and Green Light: an artistic

workshop, previously hosted by a number of

other arts institutions, which brings together

members of the public with asylum seekers and

refugees to construct ‘green light lamps’.

Extending beyond the gallery walls, and

making viewers conscious of their own physical

and mental real-time experience of the artwork,

Eliasson continues to confuse the boundaries

of his artistic practice.

AUGUST 2019

Below Eliasson’s

Your Uncertain

Shadow (Colour)