Eliasson, Olafur (DK)
Urban Space
Olafur Eliasson
Born 1967 in Holbćk, Denmark
Lives in Copenhagen and Berlin
Olafur Eliasson's installations are often the result of collisions between natural
and cultural elements. A river is dyed green and artificial waterfalls are installed in museums or in the centre of New York. In Double sunset from 1999, installed in the Dutch city of Utrecht, Eliasson created a sunset of scaffolding, steel and lamps that mirrored the actual sunset. A sunset is an event with which we are all familiar but which elicits very different associations in each of us: romantic, natural or symbolic as the case may be. Any sense of the natural is punctured, however, by the fact that here viewers can walk behind the sun and see its construction. And yet, the image remains aesthetically beautiful and seductive. Eliasson challenges the notions of space and concepts that we normally take for granted, so that as viewers - and participants - we are invited to perceive what we have seen a thousand times before in a new way. And this is where Eliasson's art steps beyond institutional frameworks and opens up a fresh perception of our agency in the world.
Eliasson's contribution to the exhibition is The collectivity project, premiered in 2005 at the Tirana Biennale in Albania. This time round, the urban planning project is set up in Copenhagen's city centre, inviting passers-by to share in the construction of a micro-landscape of Copenhagen. Thousands of white Lego bricks lie like piles of building bricks - potential buildings - on a table arrangement, which shows an image of the city as seen from above. The public, moving freely between the tables which represent Copenhagen's inner city districts as well as Amager and the Řrestad, are invited to come up with visionary, zany or completely unrealistic proposals - in effect, to rebuild the city in its main square. The project is not simply about discovering what makes for a vibrant, buzzing city - it encourages us to conjure with spaces and pool our ideas. Clearly, the resulting Lego constructions represent a collective imaginative
engagement with urban redevelopment - a community catalogue of ideas for the
Copenhagen of the future, as envisioned by its citizens. -CSJ
Lives in Copenhagen and Berlin
Olafur Eliasson's installations are often the result of collisions between natural
and cultural elements. A river is dyed green and artificial waterfalls are installed in museums or in the centre of New York. In Double sunset from 1999, installed in the Dutch city of Utrecht, Eliasson created a sunset of scaffolding, steel and lamps that mirrored the actual sunset. A sunset is an event with which we are all familiar but which elicits very different associations in each of us: romantic, natural or symbolic as the case may be. Any sense of the natural is punctured, however, by the fact that here viewers can walk behind the sun and see its construction. And yet, the image remains aesthetically beautiful and seductive. Eliasson challenges the notions of space and concepts that we normally take for granted, so that as viewers - and participants - we are invited to perceive what we have seen a thousand times before in a new way. And this is where Eliasson's art steps beyond institutional frameworks and opens up a fresh perception of our agency in the world.
Eliasson's contribution to the exhibition is The collectivity project, premiered in 2005 at the Tirana Biennale in Albania. This time round, the urban planning project is set up in Copenhagen's city centre, inviting passers-by to share in the construction of a micro-landscape of Copenhagen. Thousands of white Lego bricks lie like piles of building bricks - potential buildings - on a table arrangement, which shows an image of the city as seen from above. The public, moving freely between the tables which represent Copenhagen's inner city districts as well as Amager and the Řrestad, are invited to come up with visionary, zany or completely unrealistic proposals - in effect, to rebuild the city in its main square. The project is not simply about discovering what makes for a vibrant, buzzing city - it encourages us to conjure with spaces and pool our ideas. Clearly, the resulting Lego constructions represent a collective imaginative
engagement with urban redevelopment - a community catalogue of ideas for the
Copenhagen of the future, as envisioned by its citizens. -CSJ