GENEVA.- Espace Muraille opened a solo exhibition by Olafur Eliasson. Founded by collector Caroline Freymond, Espace Muraille is a unique space dedicated to contemporary art, located in the heart of Geneva’s Old Town. Eliasson’s exhibition continues the space’s programme of high-calibre exhibitions, which to date have included French artist Monique Frydman, Iranian artist Shirazeh Houshiary, Argentine artist Tomàs Saraceno, American artist Sheila Hicks, and British artist Edmund de Waal.
Objets définis par l'activité (Objects defined by activity) is organized around representative elements of Eliasson’s artistic vocabulary – notably his work with perception, light, water, and colour – and includes several new installations produced especially for the space. Initiated by Laurence Dreyfus, the exhibition was developed in close collaboration with the artist and his studio. The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue.
Caroline and Eric Freymond are important patrons of Eliasson’s work, which they have followed closely for many years. In the words of Caroline Freymond, ‘Olafur Eliasson’s art combines thought and action to create connections between different perceptions of the world at both the individual and collective scale; his interventions always enable us to reflect on the space we inhabit in a more considered and engaged manner. It is our great pleasure to present an exhibition at the Espace Muraille devoted to “objects defined by activity”. Beyond the purely aesthetic appeal of the works, the exhibition offers visitors a procession of experiential encounters as they move through a space transformed by experimentation with sensory perception, physical form, and movement in time.’
Olafur Eliasson: Objets définis par l'activité, at Espace Muraille, brings together a selection of 18 artworks which attest to Olafur Eliasson’s research on time, perception, space, movement, and the relativity of reality.
Eliasson is an artist who understands our era not only from a scientific and aesthetic point of view but also with a sense of communal ecological urgency, as exemplified by his projects Little Sun, Ice Watch, and Green light – An artistic workshop. The works in this exhibition are good examples of what the artist refers to as ‘experimental setups’ – they trigger viewers’ perceptions, encourage them to move about and examine the works from various perspectives. This reflects Eliasson’s idea that viewers play a key role in coproducing the artworks.
In the first room, a series of small sculptures explore Eliasson’s geometric vocabulary as well as his experiments with reflection, refraction, and painting with light. Among these are a work comprising panes of coloured, hand-blown glass that depict two overlapping sets of ellipses; a new painting from Eliasson’s colour experiment series that presents viewers with a confrontation between deep black and the colours of the rainbow; and a work that plays – via the magnifying capacity of a shallow concave mirror – with viewers’ sense of scale.
The next room introduces watercolours that explore the effects of overlapping washes of colour or were created by allowing a fragment of glacial ice to melt atop a wash of watercolour pigment. Time is momentarily suspended when faced with the grace of these works, which encourage viewers to question humanity’s impact on nature.
On the lower floor, visitors are greeted by Black glass sun, made from a dark circle of convex glass ringed by a bright halo of monofrequency light, and The gaze of Versailles, two golden eyes that gaze back at the viewer. Passing through a curtain into a darkened space, viewers encounter the final works in the exhibition: Object defined by activity (now/soon/then). These three water-sculptures are revealed by the rhythmic flash of stroboscopic lights. Seemingly suspended by the flashes of light, the aquatic arrangements appear to freeze in time, although the sound of splashing droplets in the dark allows viewers to discern the ongoing process.
