Life inside and out...
When I’m writing copy for new housing developments, builders are always keen to find a way to promote their outside space and focus on‘bringing the outside in’
This week I read bout an artist who has taken that quite literally.
In his exhibition called ‘Life’ Danish–Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson has removed both walls and windows in an ambitious new project at the Fondation Beyeler in Basel.
Museums are normally quiet spaces with heat, light and noise carefully controlled. Not opened up to wind, rain and passing wildlife!
For the project, Eliasson has flooded the museum’s outdoor pond filling it with floating ferns, dwarf water lilies, shell flowers, red root floaters, and water caltrop and then letting it flow inside by having the institution’s exterior glass facade removed.
The museum, now only a shell, is left open to the elements and to visitors around the clock, day and night, until July.
The show is open 24 hours a day until 11 July 2021. At night the interior is lit up with blue light and there are many more chances to say hello to small animals such as bats, insects, birds. For those unable to visit it, there is a live stream of the exhibition using cameras fitted with different optical filters that “allude to non-human perspective”.
A prismatic livestream sees some of the cameras fitted with apparatuses that mimic the sensory experiences of animals and insects, capturing how the immersive space changes with each moment, especially as the surface reflects shadows and passersby.
By blending the boundaries between the virtual and the actual, Eliasson said the exhibition becomes more visibly entangled with the world: “This entanglement is our way of being.”
“Life” (2021), installation view at Fondation Beyeler, Riehen/Basel. Photo by Mark Niedermann, courtesy of the artist; neugerriemschneider, Berlin; Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York / Los Angeles, © 2021 Olafur Eliasson
ALL IMAGES ABOVE
You can see more of the artist’s work on his studio’s site and Instagram
Oh how I wish I could be there in real life to wander through this at dusk. That would be a treat indeed.
Queen Marie
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