The exhibition ‘Olafur Eliasson: In Real Life’, will be on view at
the Tate Modern in London until 5 January, and at the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao from 14 February to 21 June of 2020.
After flooding the Turbine Hall with the rays of a virtual sun that attracted crowds in 2003, Olafur Eliasson (Copenhagen, 1967) has returned to the Tate Modern 16 years later with a retrospective exhibition that gathers 40 pieces designed since 1990. ‘In Real Life’ invites us to explore the three issues that have guided the interests and creative process of the Danish artist: the concern for ecology, the research in the field of geometry, and the exploration of human perception, in an attempt to grasp how we sense and shape the world around us.
© Runa Maya Mørk Huber
Beauty, 1993. Photo: Anders Sune Berg, Moderna Museet, Stockholm 2015
The Weather Project, 2003. Photo: Marcus Leith and Andrew Dunkley, Tate Photography
Little Sun, 2012. Photo: Penny Wang, Doha, 2012
Little Sun, 2012. Photo: Michael Tsegaye
After works like Beauty or The Weather Project, which explore different atmospheric conditions, Little Sun is an initiative that goes beyond the field of art to take light to places without access to the power grid.
Din Blinde Passager, 2010. Photo: Anders Sune Berg, Tate Modern, London
Room for one colour, 2003. Photo: Dmitry Baranov, Pinchuk Art Centre, Kiev, 2011
By cancelling polychromy with monofrequency lamps, Eliasson proposes a phenomenological experience that calls the philosophical relationship between perception and reality into question.
Ice Watch, 2014. Photo: Charlie Forgham-Bailey, London, 2018
The Ice Watch series provides a tangible testimony of the imminent Arctic thaw by placing twelve large ice blocks cast off from the Greenland ice sheet and leaving them to melt in public places.
Model Room, 2003. Photo: Anders Sune Berg, Tate Modern, London
