Olafur Eliasson: Photographs
THE MENIL COLLECTION May 26-September 5, 2004
Notes l. Sebastian Smee, "The artist who paints with the weather," London Telegraph online, September 30, 2003,
A fully illustrated color catalogue accompanying the exhibition not only contextualizes Eliasson's photographs within his broader oeuvre for the first time, but it also characterizes his approach to conceptual photography within the history of contempora1y art. The catalogue includes an essay by Matthew Drutt, who organized the exhibition, as well as an interview with Eliasson. The Menil Collection will be ' . ,,.,. the show's only venue. . ' :
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'; -; .... ~ _";"" .. : ·:_.,: This exhibition is generously supported by Nina and Michael Zilkha and in part by the City of Houston.
front: CnjstalstatJe wall series, 1996. 13 black and white prints, 495/s x 59 1/6 in. (126 x 150 em). Edition unique. Courtesy neugerriemschneider, Berlin
.,t:.4 Jtl ~ ,._ I, ' -¥•• ' ' • ' . "!:'/ •'· THE MENIL COLLECTION ! . J J ' • 1515 Sui Ross Houston, Texas 77006 713-525-9400 .. ' . ., ~ ... : .... , . ~. www. menil.org I think of [the museum] as the isolation of our senses; our surroundings are being taken to a higher level of representation, and therefore taken away. - Olafur Eliasson, 2000
SINCE EMERGING IN THE LATE 1980S, Olafur Eliasson has gained an international reputation for evoking natural phenomena in constructed environments. Deploying light, water, fire, earthen elements, architectural objects, and technology, he creates experiential conditions both engaging and disorienting-an artificial waterfall that works in reverse; a rainbow created by mist and light; a wind tunnel, a room of fog, and a whirlpool in a vat. Unlike perceptual artists such as Robert Irwin and James Turrell, Eliasson reveals the processes that produce his simulations, creating a paradox of illusion and disillusion, concealment and revelation. His interest" .. .is not to first make an The earthquake series, 2000. 16 C-plints, 48 1/4 x 68 in. (122.5 x 173 em). Erution 216. experience and then deconstruct it, but to create an experience which Collection of Scott J. Lorinsky has a certain transparency or self-reflexiveness built into it." 1 At the core of Eliasson 's enterprise is an ongoing engagement with Eliasson began to consider his photographs of Iceland's geographical the medium of photography, whose ability to document an expetience conditions as an art project; by 1994, a more structured approach to this with light and light -sensitive matetials echoes his transformation of the activity had resulted in composite photographs. ephemeral into the material. Although largely marginalized in exhibitions to date, his photography is intrinsic to his conceptual development and ORGANIZED BY THE MENIL COLLECTION, "Olafur Eliasson: reflects particular ideas that operate in his three-dimensional works. Photographs" is the first exhibition to explore this important aspect of Drawing from Iceland's terrain, Eliasson's "seeing" generates the photo his art in depth. Consisting of sixty key projects from 1994-2003, many and the awareness of the represented matter. He considers photography of which were shown only once and have never been seen in the United a means of actively producing, rather than passively recording, his States, the exhibition comprises thirty-one composite pictures, all but surroundings. tl1ree of which are made in editions, and twenty-nine unique single Eliasson's early years greatly influenced his creative enterprise. Born photographs. Both categories are ongoing approaches to "mapping" the in Denmark in 1967, he is of Icelandic descent and spent much of his countty oflceland tl1rough visual documentation. Thus, the exhibition childhood in close proximity to its primordial landscape. He studied at offers a critical overview of a central aspect of Eliasson's att, one that the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Denmark from 1989 until1995, documents "the movement, the changes, the differences, the manifold, focusing on philosophy, phenomenology, and aesthetics-notably, the the endless(ness), the duration, and the timely aspects"2 of natural Wlitings of Hemi Bergson and Martin Heidegger, Edmund Husser!, phenomena and their spatial, temporal, and experiential conditions. and Mamice Merleau-Ponty, as well as the art of Michael Asher, Eliasson has frequently expressed his admiration for Donald Judd, Buckminster Fuller, Dan Graham, Irwin, Gordon Matta-Clark, and who explored ways in which the spectator's relationship to the art object Turrell. It was during tl1ese years that his photography began to flourish. and the museum space could be changed; Judd achieved this with his Visiting Iceland every summer became an impmtant annual break, Specific Objects, such as "stacks" and Plexiglas floor boxes that dealt wherein both Eliasson and his father- also an active photographer with repetition, theme, and vatiation. Eliasson adapted this approach to would travel throughout the highlands of the countty. Around 1992, photography by using the grid to arrange various views of a single presentation that manifests itself in Eliasson's grid-like arrangements. Representing va1ious paths, landscapes, and stones that can be seen throughout the given space, Petnm's garden series also points toward the theme of repetition explored in later works such as The broken stone series (1997) or The path series (1999). Further, by using his camera to produce an experience of a place, Elias son confuses the roles of subject and object in a museum, suggesting his own resistance to "museological" stability. Another early project, The bridge series (1994-95), encompasses several subjects he has since elaborated on: the intervention of man made structures into nature, geological phenomena, and mountainous horizons. Eliasson created this work passively by assembling it fi·om a larger collection of photos taken during his excursions. When he sifted through the images, he found a proliferation of pictures with bridges, which he then crafted into a se1ies contrasting this common subject. The intuitive nature of The bridge series contributes to the unstructured nature of the work. When it was first installed, it formed a single line following the contours of the galleq space. For the Menil exhibition, the grid has been reconfigured, leaving two spaces open at the bottom right of the se1ies. Thus, the notion of order, which is inherent in the concept The lighthouse selies, 1999, 20 C-p1ints, 603/4 x 67"!4 inches ( 154 x 172 em). Edition 4/6. CoUJtesy of Tanya Bonakdar Galle1y, New York of grids, is actually random. Later projects, such as The lighthouse series (1999) and Reykjavik series (2003), explore this process of theme and variation with greater sophistication. location. Each of his series focuses on an aspect of Iceland's terrain from glaciers, caves, ice, islands, and rocks, to lighthouses, b1idges, and IN 1997, WHILE THAVELING ACHOSS ICELAND, Eliasson wrote in buildings-and the images that comprise each se1ies record either the his journal, "We didn't pass through the countJyside, the countJyside particular aspect throughout Iceland or detailed perspectives of one passed by us, readily assembled, depicted, reproduced, and framed."3 form in a particular region. They are often compared to Bernd and Hilla His documentation of this observation points to the more coherent, Becher's Typologies, photographic studies documenting the similarities literary character of the work that emerged in the late 1990s, when he of a given building type, such as a water tower. However, fundamental started to either record a journey or create a topological survey with the to Eliasson's enteqnise is the expeditiona1y character of his art; rather camera; the spontaneity of Pet run's garden series and the happenstance than being typological in nature, his g1id-like projects document his characte1izing The bridge series would evolve into more contemplative ell:perience of a specific space over a pe1iod of time. yet unique narratives such as The park series (1998), The path series One of the earliest photo projects, Petrun's garden series (1994) (1999), The walk series (1999), The aerial river series (2000), and The represents the temporal evolution of a subject within a place, an idea river-raft series (2000). In The walk series, the viewer follows Eliasson Eliasson would have fully mticulated by the late 1990s. In these descending a mountain. Pausing eveq two-hundred yards or so to take photographs, one senses the mtist's spontaneous movement throughout a picture, Eliasson engages the viewer in his task. On the other hand, Petrun's Garden, a unique museum that houses solid minerals, c1ystals, The aerial river series is less peculiar, concerned instead with an overall and rocks. Eliasson captured the unorganized arrangements of objects mapping of a location; it traces the length of a single river as it winds both on the shelves and in the landscape, a nonhierarchical manner of down a mountain. Exemplmy of his shifting and contrasting viewpoints are The glacier a number of other works through both Eliasson's actual descent into series (1999) and The ice melting series (2002), both based in time as well. caves and playful imagery suggesting a descent into faults and emthquake In the former, Eliasson traced the movement of a mountain snowcap as crevices. Eliasson recently noted, "I had to climb into the cave, jump it melted and ran down into a valley. Interestingly, Eliasson had initially over the fault, or lean over the water waiting for the surface to be still taken photos at the foot of the formation, but decided to discard these enough .... I had to engage myself, relate, and participate in the spaces and foster the total perspective by using a small propeller plane to take and phenomena in the photos-." Works such as The cave series, looking aerial shots. By contrast, The ice melting series takes a close look at in (1998), The cave series, looking out (1998), The inner cave series something small: each piece of ice photographed was between four and (1998), and The earthquake series (2000) address conditions of gravity ten inches long. Eliasson enlarged it, capturing it in a state of change in exercises created by positive and negative space. from solid to liquid. Dating between 1998 and 2003 are the unique single photographs Conditions of time, distance, and space are manifested in The island assembled together as Untitled (Iceland series). An ongoing project series (1997). Employing a shifting scale and format, the top few rows of since 1993, these works are about landscapes that refer primarily to pictures are sh01t and wide in appearance, emphasizing the viewer's traces of human activity or intervention-buildings, automobiles, roads, distance from the h01izon, while in succeeding rows the pictures grow paths, or terrestrial features resembling man-made objects. Mannered progressively taller and squarer. The bottom row of pictures, in which and picturesque, they form a contrast to the salient appearance of human the islands are quite conspicuous, suggests Eliasson's recurring interest activity in the composite photographs, seemingly disrupting Eliasson's in the condition of gravity: the large rock formations convey the illusion gaze-namely, Looking for hot water on Gunnar's land (1995), Yellow of floating on the smface of the water. The large stone series (1998) series (1995), and The Chinese series (1997). Interestingly, the Untitled mticulates this condition as well: mammoth boulders appear perched at (Iceland series) is charactelized by both singularity and conformity: here, precarious angles on unstable surfaces. Encumbering conditions inform for the first time, these autonomous photographs have been assembled in a nonhierarchical glid, revealing thematic formal elements that would have othe1wise gone unnoticed.
ACCORDING TO ELIASSON , "Since my interest in the landscapes was eventually about space and different kinds of spatial understanding, it seemed obvious to me to t1y these ideas out on city spaces." He thus continued to experiment in his "mapping" of Iceland by photographing the Reykjavik series. Here, he turned his gaze away from nature and created a complex atlas of the architectural development in the city through a mapping of scale, location, culture, and self-reflection. In light of this advanced articulation of the glid-merely nine years after the Petrun's garden series-the Menil exhibition is clearly but an introduction to the artist's photo-based evolution. Perhaps the most refreshing aspect of Eliasson's creativity is that he generates new experiences in the same way that he encourages his viewers to do-without expectation or premeditation. - Susan Braeuer Project Curatorial Assistant
The inner cave series, 1998. 36 C-prints, 993/4 x 140 1/2 inches (254 x 357 em). Edition 3/6. Collection of Carl Pite and Ruth Miles Pite