Who is Olafur Eliasson?

Olafur Eliasson was born in 1967 in Copenhagen but his family immigrated to Iceland later on during his childhood. Since the beginning of his career as an artist, he has worked hard to create visually impactful work that has been characterized by sincerity.

Through the years, Eliasson has built up a reputation for himself as a social practice artist. His works are designed to export art outside of its conventional confines and challenge how people view and inhabit the world.

Throughout his career, Eliasson has become a progressive leader in the kind of art that provokes people to stop and think about how they view community, culture, and the natural environment surrounding them.

Motivation

Eliasson’s work has always been driven by the artist’s desire to make the world a better place. As such, a lot of his projects force the viewers to question their role in environmental pollution.

In so doing, Eliasson is highly regarded as an art activist that focuses on environmental preservation and the humanitarian future. By creating works that compel uncertainty, his works encourage people to think and sense beyond the limits they have become accustomed to.

Riverbed

Today, Eliasson is best known for his large-scale installations, which attract interest thanks to his unique scope and variety. Riverbed, for instance, was a site-specific installation created for the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark to blur the lines between the manufactured world and the natural one.

The Riverbed consisted of a large rugged landscape complete with a riverbed and rocks. To construct his riverbed, he filled with museum’s South Wing with dirt and rocks of all sizes before adding a narrow trench of water to resemble a riverbed. Visitors at the exhibition were asked to explore the rugged surface by traveling along the different rooms.

Video: Olafur Eliasson speaks about Riverbed

Analysis

Recreating his rugged landscaped, it is clear that Eliasson’s Riverbed was a product of site-specific installation inspiration. Not only did the museum selected by Eliasson for his landscape lend a raw and elemental power, but the museum space itself also acted as a work of art.

His exhibition was created to question the meaning and the experiences of viewers who attended the show and encourage them to explore the complexities between the viewer and the building.

In turn, Riverbed helped overturn the audience’s expectations as the museum-goer, thus blurring the lines between participants and observers. Therefore, visitors were not only at the exhibit but also on it, which consequently helped to invoke a sense of freedom.

Installation photos

Explore nearby
Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Denmark