Olafur Eliasson has six works made within the last two years at the Tanya Bonakdar Gallery March 23 - April 22, 2017.
I'll take a minute to discuss a few of them here. Some of the works are to my mind vintage Eliasson: taking a simple idea or a simple object and distilling something essential out of it. The main gallery space consists of three large mirrors against the three walls with large metal railings coming out of the mirrors at semi-circles. The circles are completed by the mirrors. You walk around the space and see yourself and these orbital railings reflected endlessly. There's a quiet strangeness to the experience. Eliasson's political-art-optimism is present in the works title, "The listening dimension". Art allows us to draw our own conclusions, engage others and voice different opinions and still be together...
The railings complete their circles in the reflections of the mirror. They repeat in an endless mirror effect. (Photo: http://www.tanyabonakdargallery.com/exhibitions/olafur-eliasson_9/6
I find these types of gallery sheet descriptions difficult to stomach and tangentially related to his work. But it's besides the point because the works themselves are wonderful. "Rainbow bridge [2017]" is a series of glass balls about the size of basketballs that are partially painted in slices on about 1/3 of the surface area. Depending on where you walk, the balls change in color and reflective properties. At one point you see yourself upside down, at another you see a person on the other side of the ball, at another strange, burn like circles emerge from the colors. The entire process of walking up and down the "bridge" is one of distortion and discovery.
Upstairs Colour experiment no. 78 (2015) excited me like Your Atmospheric Colour Atlas did many years ago when I was first introduced and fell in love with Eliasson's work: a simple idea, but one that requires experiences to appreciate it. "A large grid of seventy-two paintings of subtly progressing hues that reveal the entire spectrum of colors visible to the human eye," is put in a room with florescent yellow lights and a string attached to a powerful white-light bulb. If the white bulb is off, a gray scale is perceived over the entire seventy-two paintings, from white to black. If the string is pulled, the white-light brings the spectrum back. A simple joy and one that requires a visit to the room to truly appreciate!
