Stockholm, Olafur Eliasson at Moderna Museet

Place: Stockholm, Sweden

Olafur Eliasson - Verklighetsmaskiner/Reality machines
3 October 2015 - 17 January 2016
Moderna Museet - Stockholm

All images courtesy of Moderna Museet

A major retrospective exhibition of Olafur Eliasson at the Moderna Museet

From October 3, 2015, to 17 January, 2016, the Moderna Museet in Stockholm presents a major retrospective exhibition of the work by acclaimed Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson.

Organized by Moderna Museet and ArkDes – Swedish Centre for Architecture and Design – and curated by Matilda Olof-Ors, the exhibition, entitled Verklighetsmaskiner/Reality machines, showcases various seminal works by Eliasson (b. 1967), a master in creating a dialogue and a complex ensemble of inter-relations between art, space, architecture, and the visitors.

In the last decades indeed, Eliasson, through site-specific works, installations, spatial designs, pictures, and sculptures, subverted the traditional division between visual arts, architecture, design, landscape, and communication.
Eliasson’s peculiar vision clearly emerges from various works presented on Inexhibit in the past, such as Riverbed, a special commission by the Louisiana Museum in Denmark, and those inspired by Eliasson’s long-time fascination and engagement with Ethiopia and exposed in the exhibition Time-sensitive activity held in Addis Ababa in early 2015.
You can find the links to the related articles at the bottom of this page.

© Olafur Eliasson. Photo: Anders Sune Berg. Installation view, Moderna Museet/ArkDes, Stockholm 2015

Now, the exhibition in Stockholm presents a comprehensive overview of Eliasson’s artistic career so far. From his early works in the 1990s, such as the “illusory” optical machine Beauty (1993), to the architectural project developed together with Henning Larsen Architects (Reykjavik Concert Hall, 2005-2011), to his recent “total artworks” like Seu corpo da obra (2011) and installations like Big Bang Fountain (2015), Eliasson always expresses his fascination with the world of perceptions, sometimes physical, sometimes immaterial – but always transforming passive visitors into “inhabitants”, as well as with the hybridization of different languages, means of expression and temporal planes.

Olafur-Eliasson-seu-corpo-da-obra-Moderna-Museet-Stockholm-2015

Big Bang Fountain, 2014, Installation view at Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris 2014 © Olafur Eliasson, Photographer: Thilo Frank / Studio Olafur Eliasson, Courtesy of the artist; neugerriemschneider, Berlin; Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York

Furthermore, on the occasion of the exhibition, the Moderna Museum has acquired Model Room, one of the key works by the Danish artist and a sort of “summa” of Elisasson’s artistic vision. Model Room is a three-dimensional archive in which he arranged the models realized for his artworks over twenty years. Conceived together with Icelandic architect and mathematician Einar Thorsteinn, a long-term friend and collaborator of Eliasson. Model Room has now found a permanent home in the Swedish Museum.