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Past exhibition

Olafur Eliasson: In real life

02.14.2020 - 04.11.2021

Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson (b. 1967) puts the experience of viewers at the center of his art. Olafur Eliasson: In real life brings to our attention some of today’s most urgent issues through around 30 artworks created by the artista between 1990 and today: sculptures, photographs, paintings, and installations that play with reflections and shifting colors and challenge the way we navigate and perceive our environment. Through materials such as moss, water, glacial ice, fog, light, or reflective metals, Eliasson encourages viewers to reflect upon their understanding and perception of the physical world that surrounds them.

Eliasson’s art grows from an interest in perception, movement, embodied experience, and feelings of self. Central to his artistic practice are his concern with nature, inspired by time spent in Iceland; his research into geometry; and his ongoing investigations into how we perceive, feel about, and shape the world around us. Studio Olafur Eliasson, his Berlin-based studio, is a space for work, but also for encounters and dialogues, that brings together a diverse team of skilled craftsmen, architects, archivists, researchers, administrators, cooks, programmers, art historians, and specialized technicians.


His practice extends beyond making artworks, exhibitions, and public interventions to include architectural projects. Convinced that art can have a strong impact on the world outside the museum, Eliasson has created solar lamps for off-grid communities, conceived artistic workshops for asylum seekers and refugees, created art installations to raise awareness of the climate emergency, and in September 2019, he was named Goodwill Ambassador for the UNDP. “Art,” Eliasson says, “is not the object but what the object does to the world.”

Exhibition organized by the Tate Modern in collaboration with the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao

Curators: Mark Godfrey and Lucía Agirre

The Exhibition

008Galleries Eliasson

Olafur Eliasson
Model Room, 2003
Wood table with steel legs, mixed media models, maquettes, prototypes
Dimension variable
Installation view: Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, 2020
Moderna Museet, Stockholm. Purchase 2015 funded by The Anna-Stina Malmborg and Gunnar Höglund Foundation.

Pared de liquen

Olafur Eliasson
Moss wall, 1994
Reindeer moss, wood, wire
Dimensions variable
Installation view: Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, 2020
Courtesy of the artist; neugerriemschneider, Berlin; Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York / Los Angeles
© 1994 Olafur Eliasson

En la vida real (In real life), 2019

Olafur Eliasson
In real life, 2019
Aluminum, color-effect filter glass (green, yellow, orange, red, pink, cyan), bulb, LED light
Diameter 208 cm
Installation view: Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, 2020
Photo: Erika Ede
Courtesy of the artist; neugerriemschneider, Berlin; Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York / Los Angeles
© 2019 Olafur Eliasson

Tu Atlas atmosférico de color

Olafur Eliasson
Your atmospheric colour atlas, 2009
Fluorescent lights, color filter foil (red, green, blue), aluminum, steel, ballasts, haze machine
Dimension variable
Installation view: Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, 2020
ARoS Aarhus Kunstmuseum, Denmark
© 2009 Olafur Eliasson

Habitación para un color

Olafur Eliasson
Room for one colour, 1997
Monofrequency lamps
Dimensions variable
Installation view: Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, 2020
Courtesy of the artist; neugerriemschneider, Berlin; Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York / Los Angeles
© 1997 Olafur Eliasson

Pabellón de la presencia de la ausencia

Olafur Eliasson
The presence of absence pavilion, 2019
Bronze
200 x 100 x 100 cm
Installation view: Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, 2020
Courtesy of the artist; neugerriemschneider, Berlin; Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York / Los Angeles
© 2019 Olafur Eliasson

Fuente Big Bang

Olafur Eliasson
Big Bang Fountain, 2014
Water, strobe light, pump, nozzle, stainless steel, wood, foam, plastic, control unit, dye
165 x 160 x 160 cm
Installation view: Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, 2020
Courtesy of the artist; neugerriemschneider, Berlin; Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York/Los Angeles
© 2014 Olafur Eliasson

Serie del deshielo de los glaciares 1999/2019

Olafur Eliasson
The glacier melt series 1999/2019, 2019
30 C-prints, each 31 x 91 x 2.4 cm
Installation view: Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, 2020
Courtesy of the artist; neugerriemschneider, Berlin; Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York / Los Angeles
© 2019 Olafur Eliasson

El Estudio expandido

Olafur Eliasson The Expanded Studio, 2019
Installation view: Guggenheim Bilbao Museoa, 2020
© 2019 Olafur Eliasson

Earth Speakr

Olafur Eliasson
Earth Speakr, 2020
Funded by the Federal Foreign Office on the occasion of the German Presidency of the Council of the European Union 2020 and realised in cooperation with the Goethe-Institut.

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