Artist

Olafur Eliasson

Born in Copenhagen, 1967 and lives in Copenhagen, Denmark and Berlin, Germany

Olafur Eliasson’s art is driven by his interests in perception, movement, embodied experience, and feelings of self. Eliasson strives to make the concerns of art relevant to society at large. Art, for him, is a crucial means for turning thinking into doing in the world.
Eliasson’s diverse works – in sculpture, painting, photography, film, and installations – have been exhibited widely throughout the world. Not limited to the confines of the museum and gallery, his practice engages the broader public sphere through architectural projects and interventions in civic space.
Eliasson was born in 1967. He grew up in Iceland and Denmark and studied, from 1989 to 1995, at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts. In 1995, he moved to Berlin and founded Studio Olafur Eliasson, which today encompasses some seventy-five craftsmen, specialised technicians, architects, archivists, administrators, programmers, art historians, and cooks. Since the mid-1990s, Eliasson has realised numerous major exhibitions and projects around the world. In 2003, Eliasson represented Denmark at the 50th Venice Biennale, with The blind pavilion, and, later that year, he installed The weather project at Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall, London.
Take your time: Olafur Eliasson, a survey exhibition organised by SFMOMA in 2007, travelled until 2010 to various venues, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Innen Stadt Aussen (Inner City Out), at Martin-Gropius-Bau in 2010, involved interventions across Berlin as well as in the museum. Similarly, in 2011, Seu corpo da obra (Your body of work) engaged with three institutions around São Paulo – SESC Pompeia, SESC Belenzinho, and Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo – and spread out into the city itself.
Eliasson’s projects in public space include Green river, carried out in various cities between 1998 and 2001, and the Serpentine Gallery Pavilion 2007, designed together with Kjetil Thorsen. The New York City Waterfalls, commissioned by Public Art Fund, were installed on Manhattan and Brooklyn shorelines during summer 2008. Your rainbow panorama, a 150-metre circular, coloured-glass walkway situated on top of ARoS Museum in Aarhus, Denmark, opened in 2011, and Harpa Reykjavik Concert Hall and Conference Centre, for which Eliasson created the facades in collaboration with Henning Larsen Architects was completed that same year.
As a professor at the Berlin University of the Arts, Eliasson led the Institut für Raumexperimente (Institute for Spatial Experiments; 2009–14), a five-year experimental programme in arts education located in the same building as his studio (www.raumexperimente.net). In 2012, Eliasson and engineer Frederik Ottesen founded Little Sun. The social business and global project provides clean, affordable light to communities without access to electricity; encourages sustainable development through sales of the Little Sun solar-powered lamp, designed by Eliasson and Ottesen; and raises global awareness of the need for equal access to energy and light (www.littlesun.com).

Exhibitions
Exhibitions
Olafur Eliasson: Orizzonti tremanti
Castello di Rivoli Museo d'Arte Contemporanea presents a new exhibition dedicated to Olafur Eliasson.
03 Nov 2022 - 26 May 2023
Castello di Rivoli
Turin
Exhibitions
Olafur Eliasson: Nel tuo tempo
The Palazzo Strozzi Foundation presents Olafur Eliasson: Nel tuo tempo, the largest exhibition ever held in Italy dedicated to one of the most original and visionary contemporary artists of our time.
22 Sep 2022 - 22 Jan 2023
Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi
Florence
Exhibitions
Public Art Programme: Dubai Expo 2020
Integrated throughout the Expo 2020 site, 11 commissioned public artworks create a journey of ideas, aesthetics and concepts.
01 Oct 2021 - 31 Mar 2022
Expo 2020 Dubai site
Dubai, Sharjah, Abu Dhabi
Exhibitions
Unreal City
London’s biggest public festival of AR art
08 Dec 2020 - 08 Jan 2021
24 sites between Waterloo Bridge and Millennium Bridge
London
Exhibitions
Olafur Eliasson: The Collectivity Project
The collectivity project provides a space for conversation and exchange among a wide variety of participants.
14 Apr 2020 - 03 Mar 2020
Fondazione Nicola Trussardi
Milan
Exhibitions
Olafur Eliasson: In Real Life
The 30 artworks of "Olafur Eliasson: In Real Life" reflect on the way we perceive and understand reality.
14 Feb 2020 - 21 Jun 2020
Guggenheim Bilbao
Bilbao
Exhibitions
Fifteen Year Anniversary Exhibition
The Margulies Collection at the Warehouse, a pioneering force in contemporary art in Miami presents its...
29 Oct 2014 - 25 Apr 2015
The Margulies Collection at the Warehouse
Miami
Exhibitions
Beneath The Surface
Beneath The Surface brings together a selection of works from a generation of artists who are re-defining...
20 Jun 2015 - 31 Oct 2015
de la Cruz Collection
Miami
Exhibitions
Olafur Eliasson: Contact
Contact, Olafur Eliasson‘s (b. 1967, Copenhagen) exhibition explores “the relations between...
17 Dec 2014 - 16 Feb 2015
Fondation Louis Vuitton
Paris
Exhibitions
Mondo Novo: le vedute d’ottica & Olafur Eliasson.
Espace Louis Vuitton Venice presents a new exhibition, curated by film critic and collector Carlo Montanaro: Mondo...
19 Dec 2014 - 26 Apr 2015
Venice
Exhibitions
Artists in Their Time
Artists in Their Time focuses on how artists position their work and themselves within the concept of...
27 Jul 2015 - 04 Jan 2016
Istanbul Museum
Istanbul
Exhibitions
Universo
Known in Brazil as art collector, Fabio Faisal debuts as a curator with “Universo”. For the...
27 Mar 2015 - 05 May 2015
Carbono Galeria
São Paulo
Exhibitions
Olafur Eliasson: Verklighetsmaskiner/Reality machines
A fan circles in an irregular orbit above our heads, water squirts up in cascades, and in another room...
03 Oct 2015 - 17 Jan 2016
Stockholm
Exhibitions
Light Show
Light Show explores the experiential and phenomenal aspects of light by bringing together sculptures...
19 Sep 2015 - 12 Dec 2015
Sharjah Art Foundation
Dubai, Sharjah, Abu Dhabi
Exhibitions
Olafur Eliasson: Baroque Baroque
Belvedere and Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary (TBA21) have announced their upcoming exhibition with...
21 Nov 2015 - 06 Mar 2015
Winter Palace of Prince Eugene of Savoy
Vienna
Exhibitions
Olafur Eliasson: Nothingness is not nothing at all
The Long Museum, Shanghai announces the first survey exhibition of the work of world-renowned Danish...
20 Mar 2016 - 19 Jun 2016
Long Museum
Shanghai
Exhibitions
Olafur Eliasson in Versailles
From 7 June to 30 October 2016, the Palace of Versailles welcomes the Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur...
03 Jun 2016 - 31 Oct 2016
Château de Versailles
Paris
Exhibitions
The End Of The World
On the occasion of its reopening, the Luigi Pecci Centre for Contemporary Art presents the exhibition...
16 Oct 2016 - 19 Mar 2017
Centro per l’Arte Contemporanea Luigi Pecci
Prato
Exhibitions
Olafur Eliasson: The parliament of possibilities
Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art hosts “The parliament of possibilities“, a major solo exhibition...
28 Sep 2016 - 26 Feb 2017
Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art
Seoul
Exhibitions
Life is Beautiful
Laurence Dreyfus presents the first edition of “Chambre à Part” in the USA, during Art Basel in...
28 Nov 2016 - 03 Dec 2016
Miami
Exhibitions
Olafur Eliasson: Una mirada a lo que vendrá
This is the third solo exhibition by the artist with the gallery. It brings together recent work in which...
13 Feb 2018 - 14 Apr 2018
Galería Elvira González
Madrid
Exhibitions
Collection David H. Brolliet, Geneva
The Fondation Fernet Branca presents an exhibition of the collection of David Brolliet, collector from...
27 May 2018 - 30 Sep 2018
Fondation Fernet-Branca
Basel
Exhibitions
New Exhibitions at the Margulies Collection 2018
The Margulies Collection at the Warehouse will open this season with an additional 5,000 square feet...
23 Oct 2018 - 27 Apr 2019
The Margulies Collection at the Warehouse
Miami
Exhibitions
The Street. Where the World is Made
The exhibition gathers more than 200 works by around 140 artist to pay an homage to the street, investigated not...
07 Dec 2018 - 28 Apr 2019
Rome
Exhibitions
Olafur Eliasson: In Real Life
Organised by Tate Modern in collaboration with Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, “In Real Life” explores...
11 Jul 2019 - 05 Jan 2020
Tate Modern
London
Exhibitions
Phi Immersive: Theatre of Virtuality
Featuring new immersive projects by Anish Kapoor, Olafur Eliasson, Marina Abramović, among others, Phi...
22 Jul 2019 - 15 Aug 2019
Ca’ Rezzonico Gallery
Venice
Exhibitions
Phi Immersive: Theatre of Virtuality II
Bringing 3 more new virtual reality collaborations, Samsung & Punchdrunk International’s sensory...
28 Aug 2019 - 28 Oct 2019
Ca’ Rezzonico Gallery
Venice
Exhibitions
Can It Really Be 20 Years Already? Art in Our Times, Contemporary Masters, and Philanthropy
The Margulies Collection at the Warehouse presents its 20th Year Anniversary of public exhibitions with...
31 Oct 2019 - 31 Oct 2020
The Margulies Collection at the Warehouse
Miami
Art Spaces
Galeria Luisa Strina
Galleries in São Paulo
PKM Gallery
Galleries in Seoul
Related Content
Articles
Olafur Eliasson to create a new exhibition project at Fondation Beyeler in 2021 – Read
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