Olafur Eliasson

neugerriemschneider, Berlin
Through December 15

For his latest show, Olafur Eliasson transformed the Berlin gallery into a system powered by viewers’ movements and unintentional interactions. The exhibition space’s entrance took on the aspect of an eight-meter-long cardboard tunnel made out of pieces that, when assembled, formed polyhedrons. When entered, an optical illusion made the tunnel appear to rotate on its own axis.

A metal air-conditioning tube crossed the entire gallery, connecting another space enclosed by cardboard walls—within which a machine produces a miniature fog spiral that contorts and changes shape as visitors move through the space of the gallery—with the outside air. By way of this tube, the fog was expelled into the courtyard where, according to atmospheric conditions, it became more, or less, visible.

On a pedestal adjacent to the cardboard room, the artist displayed a three-dimensional model, Mirror Pavillon, that was decorated with flashing lights and made, like the tunnel, from different connected pieces of a many-faceted structure. The model provided a virtual macrosystem of the entire exhibition.

Eliasson’s recent spectacular exhibition at the ZKM in Karlsruhe astonished the public with an artificial waterfall, frozen surfaces, and rainbows. In this new show, despite working with humble materials, the artist suceeded in creating a sense of completeness that had a hint of magic or hypnosis. His work demonstrates some similarities with Process Art from the ’60s (Group Zero), but instead of revealing the system’s operation, Eliasson conceals it, rendering the link between cause (the movement of the people in the tunnel) and effect (the changing shape of the fog spiral) unverifiable.

Addressing “the things that you don’t see that you don’t see” (a direct translation of the show’s title, Die Dinge die Du nicht siehst die Du nicht siehst), Eliasson manifests the dialectic between reality and its reproduction through the shape of his model, questioning our very perception of the real.




Marina Sorbello
Translation by Amanda Coulson