ROTTERDAM.-After his highly-praised large yellow ’sun’ at the Tate Modern in 2003, Olafur Eliasson has developed a special project for the three largest galleries of Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam. The presentation can be seen until 8 January 2006. During the past ten years Olafur Eliasson (1967), who grew up in Copenhagen, has built up an oeuvre consisting of rainbows, sunsets, waterfalls, scent walls, mist, shafts of light and periscopes. His work navigates between natural phenomena and technology. Eliasson’s work makes the spectator aware of his perception; it makes, as it were, the perception tangible.

Eliasson’s installations also refer to age-old themes in art history, such as the sublime, beauty and the visionary. Olafur Eliasson is one of the most successful artists of his generation, with countless solo exhibitions in prominent museums all over the world. Moreover, Eliasson has contributed strongly to the concept of ‘perception’ becoming one of the guiding tendencies in the visual arts of the past five years. He lives and works in Berlin and Copenhagen.

Light and water - For Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Eliasson has developed one big installation, focussing on the visualization of light-waves, visualized by means of a varying interaction of light and water. This process is presented on a monumental scale in the galleries of Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in a monumental way. Eliasson’s work plays with the idea that a conscious perception carries within it the potential for change. Many of his installations are based on the question: ‘Where in society can we still use our senses to define our surroundings, rather than just being defined by our surroundings by means of the commodification of our bodies?’ The fact that a direct relationship emerges, in Eliasson’s work, between the individual/the visitor and his surroundings, makes the individual aware of the possibilities to change these surroundings himself. The surroundings do not play a central part, the individual does.