Project 16
Olafur Eliasson
The cubic structural evolution project
23 August - 21 September 2013
Fugitive Structures 2013
Olafur Eliasson
The cubic structural evolution project, 2004
Olafur Eliasson was born in Copenhagen, Denmark, in 1967, where he studied at the Danish Academy of Art from 1989 to 1995. He retains a strong connection to Iceland, his parents’ homeland, whose dramatic landscape and climate has been an important source of inspiration.
Central to Eliasson’s work is a consideration of how we perceive and experience the world. Often he fabricates natural looking phenomena (such as sunlight, flowing water or mist) in man-made environments such as an art gallery. These fabricated phenomena directly engage his audience’s senses and prompt reflections on how we experience things. Eliasson has described this effect as the ability ‘to see yourself seeing’.
The cubic structural evolution project 2004 is a participatory art work in which viewers contribute to the construction of a Lego world. It is a work in which Eliasson encourages a very direct level of engagement. Viewers are able to actively guide their experience of the work as it organically takes shape over the duration of its installation.
‘My works in general discuss the notion of a reality being constructed, that ideas such as ‘nature’ or ‘science’ are models for how we perceive reality. So the notions of ‘construction’ and ‘models’ are very present in all my work. I have always put an effort into exposing the way my work has been constructed, so as to suggest that there are not any universal values connected to human experience. Actually I would argue that there is no ‘nature’ but only ‘culture’ and that as we experience so called ‘nature’ we also cultivate or constitute it.’ Olafur Eliasson
Text courtesy Queensland Art Gallery / Gallery of Modern Art
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