Installation: Olafur Eliasson

‘360° room for all colours’ reminds one of what it must be like inside a nebulae. At nine foot tall, the fluorescent lights and curved projection foil emit an experience of light and color that truly immerses the individual in its interstellar resplendence.

The ‘One-Way Color Tunnel’ is like being inside a kaleidoscope, with the use of glass and acrylic mirrors, its jarred edges and diffusion of light illuminate the interior in a spectacular fashion.

Take your time: Olafur Eliasson is the first comprehensive survey in the United States of works by Olafur Eliasson, whose immersive environments, sculptures, and photographs elegantly recreate the extremes of landscape and atmosphere in his native Scandinavia, while foregrounding the sensory experience of the work itself. Drawn from collections worldwide, the presentation spans over fifteen years of Eliasson's career. His constructions, at once eccentric and highly geometric, use multicolored washes, focused projections of light, mirrors, and elements such as water, stone, and moss to 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.

Painting:

Sculpture: Ah Xian

Ah Xian
Concrete Forest 2: Sagittaria trifolia
(Threeleaf Arrowhead)野慈菇 2008-2009 (detail)
concrete
55.5 x 45.5 x 27.5 cm

Throughout his practice, Ah Xian has pursued a deeply personal exploration of cultural and spiritual identity through sculptural portraiture and representation of the human form. Using classical artistic materials and techniques practiced in China for millennia, Ah Xian creates portraits in porcelain, jade, lacquerware, bronze and cloisonné, skilfully reapplying the expressive possibilities of each medium within a contemporary context. For this installation, Ah Xian has made a dramatic shift in materials by using concrete to cast his busts. Rather than employing traditional decorative materials, he has taken the palette of the modern city, the core of our skyscrapers, buildings and footpaths, and imprinted each one with the delicate foliage of different plant species. Concrete forest, 2009,is Ah Xian’s elegiac response to environmental degradation, the encroachment of urban development on the landscape and the inherent fragility of life.

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