This month, internationally acclaimed artist Olafur Eliasson is coming to Singapore!
This is his first solo exhibition in Southeast Asia! The exhibition "Your curious journey" inspires the joyful experience of synchronization with others, the joy of encountering "beauty", and the anxiety of living in the climate crisis from the three dimensions of perception, perspective, and place.
perception
Eliasson pays close attention to the different ways in which we perceive the world around us. In his work, he conducts interesting experiments with physics, exploring the gap between appearance and experience. These works are not just works of art, they can also be seen as visual paradoxes, scientific experiments.
Double Helix
A steel pipe rolled into a double helix shape. The sculpture is powered by a generator, and when activated, one half spirals up and the other slowly descends. It seems to be moving, but the sculpture is not moving. At eye height, the sculpture's double helix form is distinctive, reminiscent of the organic structure of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA).
"Life Along the Line"
Walking into the back of the projection screen, shadows are cast on the screen along a horizontal line. These shadows indicate that something is behind the viewer's screen. As object models rotate slowly along the central axis, their shadows also rotate. This step-by-step movement creates synchronicity between the image and the object, reminding us that they are just two sides of the same coin.
"Ring Star Resonator"
In The Ring Star Resonator, light rays are illuminated through the surface of a prism lens, dispersed into multiple rings that diffuse from the center point. It uses the principle of the Fresnel lens to capture multiple peripheral beams from a single light source with a single piece of glass, resulting in a powerful beam. In addition to applying this scientific principle to practical use, it also expands it into an aesthetic experience.
visual angle
Etymologically, "phenomenology" derives from the Greek word "phainomenon" ("appearance"). In this sense, we can see phenomenology as the study of representation (as opposed to reality) and our subjective experience of the inevitability of appearance, suggesting that the meaning of his work depends on our direct contact with the work, reminding us of our own active role in creating our experience of the world and its events.
"Ventilator"
An electric fan suspended from the ceiling, when the blades rotate, the fan expel air, and the air hedge causes the fan to move in the opposite direction. The electric fan rotates constantly in the exhibition hall, and its oscillating cycle pattern repeats itself. Although the operation of the fan is constant, the way it oscillates is erratic and unpredictable, and it is an interesting study that allows us to perceive invisible elements such as air.
"Multiple Kagekoya"
In a series of separate rooms, there are multiple shades of light, such as blue, purple, yellow and green. When we enter these rooms, our figures are projected onto a translucent projection screen, forming a series of flickering shadows, so that the work can be seen as a life-size shadow puppet stage on which we can perform alone or with others.
"Beauty"
A mist that appears to be drizzling is illuminated by a spotlight in the pitch-black space. When viewed from the right angle, the prismatic reflection of the light reveals a bright rainbow that represents "beauty". Eliasson gives a clear view of the mechanism of "beauty", does the rainbow exist independently, or does it exist because we perceive it?
Objects Defined by Activity
In a pitch-black room, powerful jets of water are illuminated only by strobe lights that flicker incessantly at a rapid pace. With a fraction of a second of illumination at a time, it is almost impossible to record the fascinating, organic and ever-changing forms of the water jets, making the work both dynamic and static at the same time.
Action Microscope
A film set in an artist's studio, where the team is going on their daily tasks: making coffee, checking artwork, and having meetings. These events may seem mundane, but they are inseparable from art. This entanglement is illustrated through the improvisation of a group of dancers, whose dance moves are synchronized with the activities around them. While the dancers may initially seem out of place in the studio, their movements gradually blend into the surroundings.
The Yellow Corridor
A row of single-frequency yellow lights illuminates the passage between the two exhibition halls. At its most concentrated, light can turn everything it touches into varying shades of gray, limiting our visual spectrum to a narrow range that most people are not used to. At the end of the corridor, the harsh yellow light is tempered by daylight coming in from the museum's windows, allowing us to slowly transition from the switched sensory experience to the original state.
Cube Evolution Project
Lego cityscape makeovers that you can participate in. Stacks of white Lego bricks stack on the long table, from towering skyscrapers to imaginative complexes. People can be free to play and show their creativity in such an open space.
"Consensus on Vision"
The ceiling of the exhibition hall appears to have three states of matter at once. At first glance, it may appear flat and solid. Upon closer inspection, this ceiling is actually a layer of liquid skin with tiny swirls and ripples. These effects are the result of a colored laser combined with a periodically released mist. By combining ephemeral materials, it occupies a marginal space between physical states.
place
While melting ice sheets may be a manifestation reminiscent of ecological decline for people living in temperate zones, they may be completely abstract for those living in equatorial zones, such as Singapore. Far from being a static landscape, we may be able to pay more attention to their rich, symphonic sounds by realigning our senses and listening to our environment more closely.
Glacier Melting Series 1999-2019
A series of aerial photographs documenting the changes of Iceland's 30 glaciers over the past 20 years. These prints are presented in pairs. The ice fields in each pair of photographs have receded significantly over time, revealing more rocks and moss-covered earth. Although Eliasson did not intend to show his work from the perspective of climate change when he first photographed the glacier in 1999, he realized the fragility of the landscape in the process. By comparing the appearance of the same glacier at different times, it shows how the original environment was affected by human activities, and this influence will continue.
Drifting Compass
A log with one end sharpened and a compass painted on it, carved from driftwood found off the coast of Iceland. The compass is usually found on a map or nautical chart to help the user find their place by pointing out the cardinal direction. The ability of the compass to provide clear orientation and direction is why Eliasson was fascinated by the compass.
Moss Wall
The work is an organic vertical carpet of reindeer cup moss (Cladonia rangiferina), commonly known as "reindeer moss", a symbiont of at least one fungus and one algae that covers a large area of northern tundra and taiga ecosystems. Here, moss subverts the original homogeneous museum space, breaking the boundaries between indoor and outdoor, bringing one of nature's great wonders directly to the visitor, bringing him face to face with a living, breathing wall.
The Last Seven Days of the Glacier
Shown here are the different stages of melting of a large block of ice that was originally found at Diamond Beach in South Iceland. Each stage is cast in bronze and is reminiscent of eternity. Each casting is equipped with a transparent glass sphere that symbolizes the amount of water lost. The visualization is an elegy that prompts us to think about the process of degradation and highlights the vulnerability of huge glaciers to climate fluctuations.
Seismograph Image Witness of Distance (Berlin-Singapore, Nos. 1-6)
The artist chose to ship most of the artworks on display to Singapore by sea. To document their journey across land and sea, the shipment included six basic mapping machines. Above the white paper, several ballpoint pens are attached to the robotic arm. The pens move freely, leaving a trail with every bump and turn of the crate, creating a series of unique seismograph images.
The philosopher Timothy Morton's concept of the "super-object" provides a framework for exploring the subject matter of Eliasson's work. Hyperobjects refer to a large number of phenomena or entities that are manifested on a global scale and across a vast period of time, beyond the limits of human understanding or imagination, which not only evades definitions, transcends geography, but also resists categorization.
We use data visualization tools such as computational models, maps, and diagrams to understand our inner and outer elusive experiences, including unexplained global events that act as paraobjects that may not give us the full picture on their own.
Eliasson captures traces of these extra-objects in his paintings, sculptures, and installations, thus making a brief and faint contact with the ungraspable.
"In a sense, curiosity drives us to explore the future, not the known past. Curiosity makes us think about the new way of life in the future, and it also makes us curious about our inner world, aware of the impact that the rational thinking required in modern life has on us, so that we lose sight of our own existence, do not feel alive, and cannot fully embrace the world through our senses. ”
— Olafur Eliasson
Olafur Eliasson, a visual artist born in Copenhagen, Denmark, moved to Iceland with his art-loving father. The stars, the aurora and the endless night are the background colors of his creative inspiration, and at the same time, the proximity to nature has also given Eliasson many inspirations for his future artistic creation.
From 1989 to 1995 he studied at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, before moving to Berlin, where he founded his studio, and since then he has worked extensively as a visual artist, having had solo exhibitions in major museums around the world since 1997.
奥拉维尔·埃利亚松“Your curious journey”作品展
Venue: Singapore Art Museum (SAM)
Ticket Price: S$15 (Singapore Citizens & Permanent Residents); S$20 (foreigners).
Booking:
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