Olafur Eliasson returns to Tate Modern with an unmissable exhibition that explores Eliasson’s deep engagement with society and the environment. Visitors will discover what an artist’s perspective can bring to issues of climate change, energy, migration as well as architecture.
On the terrace outside Tate Modern, visitors first encounter Waterfall 2019 – a dramatic new installation measuring over 11 metres in height. Inside the exhibition viewers will find Moss wall 1994, a vast plane 20 metres wide entirely covered with Scandinavian reindeer moss; Beauty 1993, which unexpectedly conjures the natural phenomenon of a rainbow inside the exhibition; and Din blinde passager (Your blind passenger) 2010, which offers a visceral journey through a 39-metre-long corridor full of dense fog. Further works in the show address the impact humans have on the environment, including a series of photographs of Iceland’s glaciers taken by the artist in 1999. This will be replaced in the autumn by a new artwork that incorporates the old series alongside photos taken 20 years on, illustrating the changes in this landscape that are happening now.
A selection of the artist’s kaleidoscopic sculptures including Your spiral view 2002 and the newly created Your planetary window 2019, play with light and space to create optical illusions that encourage visitors to see their environment in new ways.
The show culminates with a space called The Expanded Studio, which explores Eliasson’s deep engagement with social and environmental issues. This includes projects such as Little Sun, first launched at Tate Modern in 2012, which provides solar-powered lamps and chargers to communities without access to electricity; Green light – An artistic workshop, in which asylum seekers and refugees, together with members of the public, constructed Green light lamps and took part in accompanying educational programmes; and Ice Watch, an installation of glacial ice from Greenland, most recently staged outside Tate Modern and Bloomberg’s European headquarters, which aims to increase awareness of the climate emergency. Once every other week visitors will be able to communicate with people from Eliasson’s 100-strong team in his Berlin studio via a live link.
