Olafur Eliasson - Contemporary Art Part I New York Thursday, May 15, 2008 | Phillips

Create your first list.

Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.

  • Provenance


    Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York

  • Exhibited

    New York, Museum of Modern Art, New Photography 14: Jeanne Dunning, Olafur Eliasson, Rachel Harrison, Sam Taylor-Wood, October 15, 1998 - January 12, 1999; New York, Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, Your Now is My Surroundings, October 24 - December 2, 2000; Houston, The Menil Collection, Olafur Eliasson: Photographs, May 26 - September 5, 2004, (another example exhibited); Peekskill, Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art, Reverence, June 2004 - April 2005; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Take Your Time: Olafur Eliasson, September 8, 2007 - February 24, 2008 (another example exhibited); New York, The Museum of Modern Art and P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center, Take Your Time: Olafur Eliasson, April 20 - June 30, 2008 (another example exhibited)

  • Literature


    M. Grynsztejn, ed., Take Your Time: Olafur Eliasson, San Francisco, 2007, pl. 84, p. 55 (illustrated)

  • Catalogue Essay


    Countering the postminimalist, postmodernist refusal of figuration and contrived narratives are the exuberant forms set in motion by the…movement of bodies through and on space. Eliasson’s works bring to bear on the space they constitute (and that houses them) something that goes against the landscape tradition: a sense of nonmastery, of the implication of the body, of the vulnerability of skin exposed to nature. Here, alternative forms of space are emerging.M. Bal, “Light Politics,” Olafur Eliasson: Take your Time, San Francisco, 2007, p. 168
    While the artist’s popular installations allow for an assertive critique of the institution, viewership, and human relations, works such as The Inner Cave are more studious approaches to understanding the environment and retain a calm spirituality in the artist’s use of repetitive images. Moreover, the perspective draws metaphors between the environment and the human body, as the landscape in Eliasson’s work is a modern approach to a historically critical artistic concept.These spaces bring the human figure– now predominately returned to art through the role of the viewer–and the landscape together through the immediate concerns of modern technology and environmental influences.
    Olafur Eliasson’s grid-like approach to display in The Inner Cave is reminiscent of the photographic studies of Bernd and Hilda Becher, whose documentary photographs of the changing German industrial landscape established a studied approach to photographic methods of capturing change through comparison. Selecting the caves in Iceland, the country he was raised in, Eliasson has adopted the Bechers’ approach with his own perception of the landscape and the changing environment.The artist’s concern for environmental space and sense of natural light adds a weighted poignancy in his photographic work.

140

The Inner Cave

1998

36 C-prints in artist’s wooden frames.

14 x 20 1/2 in. (35.5 x 52 cm) each; 99 3/4 x 140 1/2 in. (253.4 x 356.9 cm) overall installed dimensions.
Numbered of six on labels adhered to the reverse of each print.This work is from an edition of six and is accompanied by a certificate of authenticity signed by the artist.

Estimate
$300,000 - 500,000 

Contemporary Art Part I

15 May 2008, 7pm
New York