Art has always been a medium for commentary. Whether it be historical events, the Earth’s vast natural landscapes, or personal triumphs, art has been one of the greatest connectors of humanity. Olafur Eliasson takes this responsibility seriously, and has created a show that challenges viewers’ perceptions while emphasizing the importance of combatting climate change.
Olafur Eliasson is an Icelandic-Danish artist who is known around the world for his large-scale installations that work to challenge the viewer’s sense of perception. Like many artists, he uses his work to commentate on issues the world is facing, and in his newest exhibition at the Gallery of Modern Art in Meanjin/Brisbane, he’s taking on the importance of combating climate change.
Eliasson has brought back his 2014 work ‘Riverbed’ which consists of a room willed with 100 tons of sand, river pebbles, and rocks.
The newest part of the exhibition is a work of the sun, titled ‘Presence.’ Eliasson and the exhibition’s curator Geraldine Kirrihi Barlow recently sat down with the Guardian to discuss the immersive work and how the artist wanted to create a sense of shared humanity.
“When you move, it moves. So the sun is asking you to notice that your presence makes a difference,” Eliasson told Monique Ross from the publication.
“It holds up in front of you the fact that your actions have consequences.”
Eliasson has long called his audience “active co-producers” in his show, due to the fact that what you see depends on where you stand. Another work in the exhibition is titled ‘Your Negotiable Vulnerability Seen From Two Perspectives,’ which shifts black to white with vibrant colors.
Eliasson grew up between Denmark and Iceland, He described the intriguing experience of witnessing vast landscapes that many struggled to understand. “His photographs of Iceland anchor the exhibition in a reality that is both beautiful and confronting. Like Australia, Iceland is experiencing huge climatic changes,” Ross wrote after attending the show.
Eliasson stated that he hopes we, as humans, can “become un-numb” to the realities of climate change and the drastic impact it’s had, and continues to have, on our planet.
“The collapse is now. The collapse is our inability to deal with the way it is collapsing,” he stated.
“There is no outside and inside. There is only the world. The gallery is inside of what is outside.”
“You don’t step into a gallery to disappear into the void. You go in to see more clearly; to see things which outside are contaminated and politicized and weaponized.”
While the realities of climate change can seem daunting and out of control, Eliasson has always hailed himself as a “prisoner of hope” when it comes to making a real difference. “It’s comforting to know people have the capacity to change how they see things,” he said.
The whole idea surrounding the ‘Presence’ exhibition is to create a sense of connectedness and possibility, as strangers work their way through the show, which includes a giant table covered in 500,000 white Legos that motivates participants to sit next to each other and build a “collective dream city.”
“We’re thinking, how do we spark off each other, and dream, and make a city where energy, materials and creativity cycle in different ways?” explained Barlow.
Barlow and Eliasson spent two months together in the artists studio with his team to bring the entire story of the exhibition to life.
Ross reported that Eliasson would often ask Barlow: “Where am I blind? What can you see that I can’t?”
“It’s been a lot of fun. You take a perspective, then I can go behind you and take your perspective, and mine, and I can hold them up against each other and see the discrepancies,” Eliasson said to Barlow.
“This gallery, like Iceland, is a place where I can exhale. I don’t have to always be on my heels. I can soften. That softening is the currency of tomorrow. That type of tenderness is actually fierce. And that is presence.”
Eric Mastrota is a Contributing Editor at The National Digest based in New York. A graduate of SUNY New Paltz, he reports on world news, culture, and lifestyle. You can reach him at eric.mastrota@thenationaldigest.com.
