Olafur Eliasson

Ólafur Elíasson ( born February 5, 1967 in Copenhagen) is a Danish artist of Icelandic origin. He lives in Berlin and Copenhagen. He mainly deals with physical phenomena in nature ( such as light and water, exercise and reflection).

Life and work

Ólafur Elíasson spent his childhood in Hafnarfjörður, Iceland. He studied from 1989 to 1995 at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen. Already during his studies he learned in Cologne gallerist Tim Neuger and Burkhard Riemschneider, and placed in them in Berlin. In 1994 he moved to Berlin from these contacts. In July 2006 Elíasson received a call from the University of the Arts ( University of Arts ) in Berlin, where he founded the Institute for Spatial Experiments in 2009.

He runs a studio in a former Berlin factory building on the Pepper Hill, where about 40-50 employees implement his designs. The courses for the University of the Arts, he performs in his own rooms.

First works by Ólafur Elíasson consist of oscillating electric fans that hang from the ceiling. The fan from 1997 swings back and forth, for example, and rotates about its own axis. Wider awareness of the artist reached a similar project in 1998, when he exhibited in 1998 a fan in Postfuhramt at the Berlin Biennial.

In the Green River Project (1998 to 2001), he inked the water of rivers in different places of the world with a non-toxic dye. The reactions of the not previously informed public were doing part of the artwork.

As part of the EXPO project Garden Landscape OWL he created a fragrance tunnel from highly fragrant plants in the Botanical Garden Gütersloh.

In 2004 and 2005 he created projects in Munich. For the new Germany - Central an accounting firm, he designed an up and down two to each other in a double helix form orbiting stairs with the title description. The following year he created with the help of a glass manufacturer with a glass façade for the sample building of the Bavarian State Opera with the name of the Stage window. On 300 m², it allows both reflections and transparency in connection with two colored layers, it closes so Marstallplatz from the south, reflecting the activities in the square in height.

The project light lab is a multi-part light installation that was designed specifically for the roof of the new portico in Frankfurt am Main. In April 2006, the first installation was presented out of line - an arc that had the appearance of a rising sun.

Ólafur Elíasson had in June 2008, four large artificial waterfalls around the southwestern tip of Manhattan installed ( under the Brooklyn Bridge, on the city highway FDR Drive, behind a warehouse on the waterfront of Brooklyn and the fourth before governors Iceland ). Estimated 13.1 billion liters rushed for 110 days of 7 clock in the morning to 22 clock in the evening of scaffolding in the East River. The energy consumption for the water cycle to have been offset by credit trading with wind energy. The project was developed in a collaboration between the municipality, the artist and the " Public Art Fund ".

Yellow fog Ólafur Elíasson is an intervention in public space, which was installed in October 2008 on the facade of the main building of the Austrian Electricity Management AG in Vienna on the initiative of the company's Verbund Collection. Every day at dusk, the facade is immersed for one hour in the yellow mist. This is the historical place to be on the court at a stage in the middle of the city, on the create an interplay of light, fog, and wind. Thanks to a smooth transition between the building, the sidewalk and the court 's perception of urban space to be changed. In addition, Yellow fog deals with the transition from day to night and draws attention to the change in the diurnal rhythm. Ólafur Elíasson not only makes the abstract concept of space, but also the technical requirements of the intervention visible. For a 48-meter- long grating along the facade was let into the pavement. Among the 32 fluorescent tubes are visible, which generate the specific, fine-tuned by the artist yellow light. Yellow fog was on the facade of the Jewish Museum in New York for the temporary exhibition Light x Eight ten years earlier in 1998: The Hanukkah Project installed.

2011, the Harpa Concert Hall was opened in Reykjavík, whose facade Ólafur Elíasson, had designed inspired by the varying tones of his native island. It consists of a honeycomb-like structure of dichroic glass that reacts according to the weather on the changing daylight colors.

In May 2012, he was appointed as a new member of the Academy of Arts in Berlin, whose election he accepted. Already at the opening exhibition of the new building of the Academy at the Pariser Platz in 2005, he had issued a light installation. An active membership requires that artists participate actively in the tasks of the Academy, so Ólafur Elíasson future will show more presence in the academy.

In May 2013, the new building of the Lenbachhaus was opened in Munich, in the entrance area, a light sculpture " whirling " of the artist hanging from the ceiling.

Honors

1997 Ólafur Elíasson received the Bremen Art Award and 2004 Eckerberg Medal. In June 2006 he received the Austrian Friedrich Kiesler Prize for outstanding achievements in the field of architecture and the arts, reflecting the experimental and innovative views of Frederick Kiesler and his theory of " correlated arts ". In September 2006, he was endowed with 500,000 DKK Culture Prize of the Danish royal couple and presented with prize money of 70,000 euros Joan Miró Prize in May 2007. In October 2013 he received the Goslar Kaiser Ring. In 2013 he gets together with the Danish architect Henning Larsen the Mies van der Rohe European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture for their concert hall Harpa in Iceland's capital Reykjavik. The price is considered the most prestigious European architecture prize and is endowed with 60,000 euros.

On 24 June 2013, the President of the Republic of Iceland, Ólafur Ragnar Grimsson, visited as part of a state visit to Germany Ólafur Eliasson's studio in Berlin.

Exhibitions (selection)

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