Designer of the Month: Olafur Eliasson

Week 3

The weather project (October 16, 2003 - March 21, 2004), a piece that was viewed by more than 2 million visitors at the Tate Modern, in London, is one of Olafur Eliasson's most famous works.[1] This monumental installation was part of The Unilever Series, for which artists are invited to create a site-specific piece for Turbine Hall. Like the works discussed last week, The weather project is notable for Eliasson's use of visible, low-tech mechanics, play with light and space, and some good old fashioned optical trickery, creating an immersive environment for the viewer.

 Olafur Eliasson, The weather project, 2003. Installation view at the Tate Modern, London, 2003. Monofrequency lights, projection foil, haze machine, mirror foil, aluminum, and scaffolding. Courtesy of the artist; Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York: and neugerrimemschneider, Berlin. Courtesy of Olafur Eliasson.

As the Tate Modern explains of this exhibition:

In this installation, The Weather Project, representations of the sun and sky dominate the expanse of the Turbine Hall. A fine mist permeates the space, as if creeping in from the environment outside. Throughout the day, the mist accumulates into faint, cloud-like formations, before dissipating across the space. A glance overhead, to see where the mist might escape, reveals that the ceiling of the Turbine Hall has disappeared, replaced by a reflection of the space below. At the far end of the hall is a giant semi-circular form made up of hundreds of mono-frequency lamps. The arc repeated in the mirror overhead produces a sphere of dazzling radiance linking the real space with the reflection. Generally used in street lighting, mono-frequency lamps emit light at such a narrow frequency that colours other than yellow and black are invisible, thus transforming the visual field around the sun into a vast duotone landscape.[2]

One of the most interesting things about The weather project was the reaction that it wrought from visitors. In creating an artificial summer's day within the museum, complete with bright sun and hazy sky, Eliasson also created an audience that reacted accordingly: laying on the floor, basking in their mirrored reflections, under the light of an artificial sun.[3] 

Olafur Eliasson, Your sun machine, 1997. Installation view at Marc Foxx Gallery, Los Angeles, 1997. Aperture cut into existing roof. Courtesy the artist and Tanya Bonakdar. Courtesy of Olafur Eliasson.

Although done on a monumental scale, The weather project was, nonetheless, just a larger form of what Eliasson has been doing all along with his mirror works.[4] Of course, to think of it another way,  it can also be seen as just another way of bringing nature into the museum or gallery space. An earlier example of this idea was Your sun machine (1997), which Apsara DiQuinzio describes in the Take Your Time catalogue:

For this site specific piece, the artist cut a circular hole in the ceiling, permitting a beam of sunlight to enter the gallery. Throughout the course of each day, as the earth rotated around the sun, the gleaming circle traveled through the room, moving across the walls and floor before disappearing at nightfall.[5]

About as low-tech as an installation can get, Your sun machine was a highly effective way of changing the viewer's perception of the world with just a simple spacial modification, bringing the sun inside.

[1] Pamela M. Lee, "Your Light and Space," from Take Your Time: Olafur Eliasson, ed. Madeleine Grynsztejn (New York: Thames & Hudson, 2007), 36.

[2] Tate Modern online, "Olafur Eliasson: The Weather Project," http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/eliasson/about.htm, (accessed July 20, 2011).

[3] Pamela M. Lee, "Your Light and Space," from Take Your Time: Olafur Eliasson, ed. Madeleine Grynsztejn (New York: Thames & Hudson, 2007), 36.

[4] Klaus Biesenbach and Roxana Marcoci, "Toward the Sun: Olafur Eliasson's Protocinematic Vision,"  from Take Your Time: Olafur Eliasson, ed. Madeleine Grynsztejn (New York: Thames & Hudson, 2007), 190.

[5] Apsara DiQuinzio, "Projects 1991-2001: Your sun machine," from Take Your Time: Olafur Eliasson, ed. Madeleine Grynsztejn (New York: Thames & Hudson, 2007), 64.