|
|
|
[ chapter 1 ]
I n t r o
-------
What
does it mean when there is an artificial rainbow exhibited in a museum?
When teenagers are ice-skating on an artificial ice rink.
When thundering masses of water create an artificial waterfall in the museum?
Is the museum a site of spectacles of nature, an expedition to the wilderness?
Does science serve as entertainment?
Does art provide new sensuous experiences in the age of science?
...
The Icelandic
artist Olafur Eliasson, born in 1967, has dedicated
his installations to human perception
and physical laws and to the conditions of nature. In his work he questions
man’s idea of nature and
the technical aids and devices we use in order to perceive and measure nature.
In the course of history
one can observe how different models of perception and of relating to space
replaced and necessitated
one another, parallel with social, ideological, technical and other changes.
In all given physical structures
there are relationships in the form of socialization potentials.
For the individual,
these models and relations can seem so natural that one can mistakenly
assume that they are actual characteristics of our surroundings. These apparently
wholly physical experiments
with water and light, air and color, often indirectly based on astrophysical
and subatomic research and experiments, are therefore in reality also experiments
with our models of perception and environment models
and hence also with our social structures.
Using his ‘devices for the perception of reality’ he creates, with the simplest
means possible, the connection between reality, perception and the portrayal
of reality. With cultural technologies he restructures natural
processes [the waterfall rises instead of falling down].
In this way nature becomes hypothetically a product of civilization. The difference
between natural environment and anthropomorphic system is not differentiated
towards the inside but towards the outside. The surrounding
is not folded inwards but surrounded from the outside. The surrounding becomes
the system, surroundings
are surrounded. The traditional difference between nature and culture and their
limits are called into question.
With this solo exhibition,
the ZKM presents the comprehensive work of Eliasson,
who participated in
the Biennial of Venice in 1999 and whose oeuvre has been shown internationally
in the recent years,
with a selection of over 30 works - many of which having been created especially
for this event.
- > Peter Weibel [Curator + Head of ZKM]
Duration:
Opening :: 30. Mai 2001
Exhibition :: 31. Mai - 26. August 2001
- - - - - - -
[ Intro | Catalog | Statements | Chronology | Bibliography | List of Works | Guided Tours | Accompanying Program | Visitors Information ]
|
(c)2001 Design & Implementation: Lindner and Fuerstner
|
|