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Take your time: Olafur Eliasson

April 20, 2008 - June 30, 2008

Take your time: Olafur Eliasson is the first comprehensive survey in the United States of works by Olafur Eliasson, whose large-scale immersive environments, installations, sculptures, and photographs elegantly recreate the extremes of landscape and atmosphere in his native Iceland, at the same time as they foreground the sensory experience of the work itself. Drawing from public and private collections worldwide, the exhibition will include 34 works that explore Eliasson’s diverse range of artistic production from 1991 to the present, including six new works created specifically for The Museum of Modern Art and P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center. Eliasson recontextualizes elements such as light, water, ice, fog, stone, and moss to create unique situations that shift the viewer’s perception of place and self. By transforming the gallery into a hybrid space of nature and culture, Eliasson prompts an intensive engagement with the world and offers a fresh consideration of everyday life. The exhibition will be on view at The Museum of Modern Art and at P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center from April 20 through June 30, 2008.

 

MoMA and P.S.1’s presentation of Take your time will include many of the works shown at SFMOMA as well as 20 additional works. The new works for the MoMA and P.S.1 exhibition are Take your time, The natural light setup, Mirror door (observer), Mirror door (user), Mirror door (spectator), and Mirror door (visitor). Take your time (2008), which will be on view at P.S.1, comprises a large, circular mirror that is affixed to the ceiling and rotates slowly on its axis, destabilizing viewers’ perception of space as they pass underneath it. The natural light setup (2008), also at P.S.1, is a light box emitting a bright, white glow from the combination of all the colors in the visible light spectrum. Mirror door (observer), Mirror door (user), Mirror door (spectator), and Mirror door (visitor) (all 2008) will be presented in slightly different iterations at both MoMA and P.S.1. These works comprise several spotlights projecting onto rectangular mirror doors to create pools of light on the gallery floor.

Other major works in the exhibition include Moss wall (1994), an installation of live reindeer moss that will naturally change color throughout its time on view in MoMA’s third-floor Special Exhibitions Gallery, and Ventilator (1997), an electric fan suspended from the ceiling of MoMA’s Donald C. and Catherine Marron Atrium, which soars 110 feet above street level. The fan will swing above the heads of visitors in ever-changing arcs—a striking representation of unpredictable movement through space.

At P.S.1, installed in the downstairs Duplex gallery, Reversed waterfall (1998) consists of a large, four-tiered scaffolding, with fonts on each level that direct water upwards, reversing its gravitational flow. Reversed waterfall, an early example of Eliasson’s experiments in this format, will remain on view at P.S.1 through September.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue that will include original essays by scholars and curators.

 

Take your time: Olafur Eliasson was circulated by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and organized there by Madeleine Grynsztejn. At The Museum of Modern Art and P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center the exhibition was expanded, and its organization and installation were overseen by Roxana Marcoci and Klaus Biesenbach.

Lead support was provided by Helen and Charles Schwab and the Mimi and Peter Haas Fund. Generous support was provided by the Bernard Osher Foundation, the Barbro Osher Pro Suecia Foundation, and SFMOMA's Collectors Forum. Additional support was provided by Patricia and William Wilson III, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

The New York showing is made possible by the Mimi and Peter Haas Fund.

Additional funding is provided by Jerry I. Speyer and Katherine G. Farley, The Contemporary Arts Council of The Museum of Modern Art, Danish Ministry of Culture, and Skagen Designs.