Gallery 205
Model room (2003) contains around 450 models, prototypes and geometric studies of various sizes. Together, they form a record of Olafur Eliasson’s work with his studio team and his long collaboration with Icelandic artist, mathematician and architect Einar Thorsteinn (1942–2015).
Between 1996 and 2014 Thorsteinn and Eliasson collaborated on many projects and researched the geometric forms, symmetries and ratios that structure a number of Eliasson’s sculptures and pavilions. These models are made from a range of materials, including copper wire, cardboard, photocopies, Lego bricks, wood, foam and rubber balls. For many years, they served as a ‘reference library’ for Studio Olafur Eliasson. Now, Model room is held at Moderna Museet, Stockholm, but the studio, and particularly its design and geometry teams, continues to create models and prototypes as part of its research.
In Eine Beschreibung einer Reflexion, oder aber eine angenehme Übung zu deren Eigenschaften (A description of a reflection or a pleasant exercise on its qualities, 1995), a spotlight shines onto a circular mirror that directs the light onto a second, rotating mirror with an undulating surface. This mirror completes a full revolution every thirty seconds, reflecting, as it revolves, an irregular patch of light onto the reverse side of a circular projection screen.
In Your uncertain shadow (colour) (2010), five colored spotlights, positioned side-by-side on the floor, project light on a white wall, where the colors blend to produce white light. When visitors walk into the space before the spotlights, their shadows appear on the wall as clusters of colorful silhouettes that amplify every movement and reveal the apparently white light’s component colors.