Olafur Eliasson
Olafur Eliasson
Olafur Eliassonis a Danish-Icelandic artist known for sculptures and large-scale installation art employing elemental materials such as light, water, and air temperature to enhance the viewer’s experience. In 1995 he established Studio Olafur Eliasson in Berlin, a laboratory for spatial research. Olafur represented Denmark at the 50th Venice Biennale in 2003 and later that year installed The Weather Project in the Turbine Hall of Tate Modern, London...
NationalityDanish
ProfessionArtist
CountryDenmark
thinking safe-haven cities
It would be wrong to say that the city of Berlin is not regulated. What I think is more interesting is to what extent a city creates a sort of safe haven for its users, so that people feel confident that the city works on their behalf.
art thinking museums
I don't know a single collector or museum director who says: 'Oh, he's on a list, so I think I'll buy something of his.' The people who buy my art put a little more thought into it than that.
thinking artist cities
I think an artist has the potential to investigate both form and content within one activity, to show that there can be coherence between form and values in our society, as in thinking about a city and building one.
art thinking trying
I don't think you need to be so result-oriented when you're trying to define the success of an art work. I think we can allow some unpredictability.
art thinking hands
When museums are left with so little money that their future is in the hands of private donors, then they are unable to develop their own signatures by collecting themselves. On the other hand, though, I think we should also celebrate the fact that there is a lot of art that lives outside of, or on the outskirts of, the art market - and it is doing quite well.
art team thinking
I do not think making art alone makes it any better than making it with a team of people.
moving thinking museums
Your rainbow panorama enters into a dialogue with the existing architecture and reinforces what is assured beforehand, that is to say the view of the city. I have created a space which virtually erases the boundaries between inside and outside – where people become a little uncertain as to whether they have stepped into a work or into a part of the museum. This uncertainty is important to me, as it encourages people to think and sense beyond the limits within which they are accustomed to moving.
thinking artist valuable
Artists are valuable to public discussion: They show the correlation between doing and thinking.
architects designers exhibit hardly noticeable reflected
It's hardly even noticeable that so many artists, designers and architects live here. It isn't reflected in the cityscape or in the museums. Many of the artists, for example, exhibit around the world, just not in Berlin.
architect asked beijing breathe certainly directly harmful museum project protect safe smoke whether
I was in Beijing a month ago working on the smoke project in collaboration with an architect there, and I was asked very directly whether it was safe to breathe in the smoke. They did not have confidence in the museum not to use harmful smoke, and they certainly didn't have confidence that the city would protect them from harmful smoke.
certain landscape looking moment mountain mountains move stand start starts walked
I've walked a lot in the mountains in Iceland. And as you come to a new valley, as you come to a new landscape, you have a certain view. If you stand still, the landscape doesn't necessarily tell you how big it is. It doesn't really tell you what you're looking at. The moment you start to move the mountain starts to move.
berlin firsts germany
I myself have already spent a third of my life in Germany, first in Cologne and then, since 1994, in Berlin.
past cities berlin
In the past Berlin was much more radical and extreme and now it's becoming much more of a conventional European city.
russia choices india
If I have the choice of traveling to Russia, India or New Zealand alone for a week for preliminary discussions or to spend that week with my family, I routinely choose my family.