Eliasson's new work: facing the tide and the desert overhead
If someone says that technology is destined to rebel against nature and lack romance, then perhaps you can argue with the work of another person: Olafur Eliasson, beloved by many.
Eliasson is a typical Nordic artist in people's cognition, focusing on flowing water, mountains, light, air, dreams, and the artistic conception of his works is open, relaxed and beautiful. But his work contains many figures of modern structures, metal, glass, curtains or interspersed with them, creating a conflicting but not contradictory aesthetic experience.
His latest work, a public art installation for Doha, Qatar, continues this ethos. The new work, "Shadows Travelling on the Sea of the Day," seems to encapsulate its particularity geographically just by listening to its name—a welcoming peninsula with a tropical desert climate that is about to usher in the World Cup, facing the Persian Gulf and welcoming the famous port to which it is delivered.
This device is not small. Pass through the villages of Ain Mohammed, Fort Zubarah, and through rugged desert landscapes. The audience has no fixed way of interaction, they can look at it from a distance, from a height, see how it grows among the traces of desert plants and rock formations, or they can get closer, to see, to touch, to lean.
When you choose the second option, it will probably produce a bizarre experience -
First, in the reflection of the mirror, the decorative support of the semicircle becomes two, forming a complete circle that you can give meaning to or simply admire its beautiful arc.
Secondly, when you look up, the ceiling with huge mirrors will reflect the sand beneath your feet and the constantly moving you. Eliasson wanted the audience to realize that when they look up, they are actually looking down, so that they can further contemplate the relationship between man and the land.
I have never believed that public art needs to have a uniform theory to ensure that everyone receives the "right" message. Instead, it is more interesting to properly disregard the artist's expression and find the remaining 999 Hamlets.
The same is true for this device. Eliasson says he hopes to help people understand the beauty and complexity of their environment and evoke soft nerves about environmental issues, but perhaps you only see a landscape that you have not seen in a familiar environment, and indulge in it—the sea next to the desert and the sunset gently wrapping the ground. As for other more profound issues or educational significance, when this beauty is profound enough, after encountering a more relevant event one day, it will definitely resonate with the creator at the same frequency - don't worry, just wait until that day.