Olafur Eliasson

Olafur Eliasson: Light Lab, 2006-2008

Portikus Frankfurt am Main

Strobo Night, Blue Moon, Deep Purple Laguna, Movementmeter for the Main, Daylight, The Heiliotropic Month, The Giant Sky Mirror Light, Green River Light, The Ultraviolet City, Water Reflection Wall, Solar Flames, Nebular Orion, Sunrise Pink, Vertical White and Blue, Reversed Full White Sun... These are some of the working titles for Olafur Eliasson’s solar experiments in the large glass roof of the Portikus in Frankfurt am Main. The project, which started in April of 2006, has become recognized far beyond the art world and has turned the Portikus into one of the most discussed architectural sites in Germany.

The glass roof is a light laboratory. Eliasson sees each chapter of the project (planned to continue until 2008) as a new test. 'What’s getting increasingly clear,' writes Daniel Birnbaum, 'is the solar fascination that recurs in his work, from the artificial rainbow “Beauty” (1993) to “Your Sun Machine” (1996) and his succession of synthetic suns the most massive of which formed the centre of Eliasson’s “Weather Project” (2003) at Tate Modern. This heliocentric drive in his art seems to have little to do with recent theoretical or artistic developments but a lot with the most ancient of speculations concerning vision and the power of the mind. Philosophy as such seems to start as a kind of sun dance. Not only sunflowers, also the tropes of language turn towards the celestial light. Writing about the heliotrope as the foundation all philosophical metaphorics in “White Mythology,” Jacques Derrida spelled out the limits of what is natural in nature: “Each time there is a metaph or, there is doubtless a sun somewhere; but each time there is sun, metaphor has begun. If the sun is metaphorical always, already, it is no longer completely natural. It is always, already, a lustre, a chandelier, one might say an artificial construction…"'


Portikus Frankfurt am Main
Alte Brücke 2 Maininsel
60594 Frankfurt am Main, Germany
Telephone 49 69 962 44 54-0 Fax 49 69 962 44 54-24
http://www.portikus.de

Take Your Time: Olafur Eliasson, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 2007, traveling to The Museum of Modern Art, and PS1, New York, and The Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, 2008 (solo); Projekt Sammlung (5): Olafur Eliasson – The shadow studies, Kunsthaus Zug, Zug, Switzerland, 2007 (solo).


Eye on Europe: Prints, Books and Multiples/1960 – now, Museum of Modern Art October 15, 2006- January 1, 2007(group); Constructing New Berlin, Bass Museum of Art, Miami, November 3, 2006- January 21, 2007 (group).


RECENT: Your Uncertainty of Colour Matching Experiment, Ikon Gallery, London, 2006 (solo); Light Lab, Portikus, Frankfurt/Main, 2006 (solo); Mediating Space / A Laboratory, Aedes am Pfefferberg, 2006 (solo); The endless study, Austrian Frederick Kiesler Prize for Architecture and the Arts 2006, Kiesler Stiftung, Vienna, 2006 (solo); The Water Concert, Project Sammlung (4), Kunsthaus Zug, 2006 (solo); The after image experiment, Zeiss Planetarium, Berlin, 2006 (solo); Your engagement sequence, Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York, 2006 (solo); Motion Notion, Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam, The Netherlands, 2006 (solo); Constructing New Berlin, Phoenix Art Museum, 2006 (group); Landscape: Recent Acquisitions, Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2006 (group); Shiftscale, Art Museum of Estonia, 2006 (group); The Garden Party, Deitch Projects, New York, 2006 (group); Peace Tower, Whitney Biennial 2006 (group); Your colour memory, Arcadia University Art Gallery, Glenside, Pennsylvania, 2005 (solo); The body as brain, Project Sammlung (3), Kunsthaus Zug, 2005 (solo); Your light shadow, Hara Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, 2005 (solo); Controlled, Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York, 2005 (group); Here comes the sun, Magasin 3 Stockholm Konsthall, 2005 (group); Ecstasy: In and about altered states, MOCA Los Angeles, 2005 (group); Meant to be lived in (Today I feel prismatic), Emi Fontana West of Rome, Los Angeles, 2005 (solo); 101 gallery, Reykjavik, 2005 (solo); Einstein Spaces, Potsdam, Germany, 2005 (group); The endless study, Foksal Gallery Foundation, Warsaw, 2005 (solo); Prolog + mission of art, Akademie der Künste, Berlin, 2005 (group); The light setup, Malmö Konsthall, Sweden, traveling to Lunds Konsthall, Sweden, 2005 (solo); Reykjavik Arts Festival, Iceland, 2005 (group); Always a little further, Arsenale, La Biennale de Venezia, 2005 (group); Making things public – Atmospheres of Democracy, ZKM, Karlsruhe, 2005 (group); Our Surroundings, Dundee Contemporary Arts, Dundee, Scotland, 2005 (group); Minding the world, ARoS Århus Kunstmuseum, Århus, 2005 (solo); Collección De Fotografía Contemporánea de Telefónica, Museo de Arte Contemporánea de Vigo, 2004 Spain, 2005 (group); WOW (The Work of the Work), Henry Art Gallery, Seattle, 2005 (group); I only see things when they move, Aspen Art Museum, Colorado, 2004 (solo); Everything is Connected he, he, he, Astrup Fearnley Museet for Moderne Kunst, Oslo, 2004 (group); Your lighthouse, works with light: 1991-2004, Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, Germany, 2004 (solo); Photographs, The Menil Collection, Houston, 2004 (solo); Colour memory and other informal shadows, Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art, Oslo, Norway, 2004 (solo); Frost Activity, Hafnarhús, Reykjavík, Iceland, 2004 (solo); Ein-leuchten, Museum der Moderne Salzburg, 2004; Invisible, Palazzo delle Papesse, Siena, 2004.The Weather Project, Turbine Hall, Tate Modern, London, UK, 2003 (solo); Danish Pavilion, 50th Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy, 2003 (solo).