Olafur Eliasson: Experience

This new catalogue accompanies the first major U.S. museum presentation of work by internationally celebrated Danish artist Olafur Eliasson, whose photography, sculpture, and installation work are distinguished by poetic economy of means and a quiet, elegant beauty. Eliasson's work typically transforms the museum or outdoor setting through installations that combine the artist's concerns with both the ephemeral natural effects of light, water, and wind and more tangible materials such as thorns, moss, and grass. His work is characterized by simplicity of approach. Despite its often-remarkable effects—rainbows, massive waterfalls, walls of steam—the technology required to create the work is relatively simple and clearly exposed for the viewer to observe. Eliasson has also worked extensively in the field of photography, frequently documenting the landscape of Iceland, his home for many years. Presented in serial grid format, Eliasson approaches photography with the mind of an amateur scientist, documenting different cave formations or icebergs in dozens of studies that take on the appearance of independent sculptural objects.