Museum Exhibition Catalogues, Monographs, Artist's Projects, Curatorial Writings and Essays
"Before, it was always about the here and now, about space and time as a convention. Now, however, it's more about how you and I construct a here and now for ourselves. Time is not measurable--it's now." Olafur Eliasson, excerpted from Hans Ulrich Obrist & Olafur Eliasson: The Conversation Series, published by Walther Koenig.
Text by Olafur Eliasson, Bouthayna Baltaji, Lina Patmali, Aspa D. Chatziefthimiou, Reem Al Selawhi, Hashim Sarkis. Photographs by Ali Faisal Al Anssari, Iwan Baan, Anders Sune Berg.
Eliasson’s ecologically centered installations reckon with the inhospitable desert landscape
Hbk, 9 x 12.75 in. / 344 pgs / 200 color. | 3/4/2025 | Awaiting stock $65.00
Essays by Frederic Brown, Rodney Cotterill, Jakob Jakobsen, Karl Holmquist, Frida Björk Ingvarsdóttir, Anders V. Munch, Svend Madsen, Ingo Niermann, Gitte Yrskou, Andrej Przywara, Isreal Rosenfield, Adam Szymscyk and Sheena Wagstaff.
Special binding, 8.75 x 12.75 in. / 188 pgs / illustrated throughout | 2/2/2004 | Not available $60.00
Published by Silvana Editoriale/Qatar Museums. Text by Olafur Eliasson, Bouthayna Baltaji, Lina Patmali, Aspa D. Chatziefthimiou, Reem Al Selawhi, Hashim Sarkis. Photographs by Ali Faisal Al Anssari, Iwan Baan, Anders Sune Berg.
This volume chronicles Danish artist Olafur Eliasson’s (born 1967) recent multifaceted site-specific installation in the desert in northern Qatar. The outdoor installation consists of 12 temporary pavilions that serve as an “artistic laboratory.” The experiments conducted inside the pavilions use natural phenomena, such as wind, water and sunlight, to create artworks that emerge over the course of the day or as the seasons change. At the National Museum of Qatar, a parallel exhibition features artworks from different periods of Eliasson’s career including light installations, geometric models, watercolors and optical devices. The themes that run throughout the two-part exhibition relate to the broader interests expressed in Eliasson’s wider practice. In the artist’s words: “The Curious Desert asks how we use vision and movement to make sense of our worlds; to make invisible phenomena visible and palpable.”
Published by Marsilio Arte. Edited with text by Arturo Galansino.
Icelandic Danish artist Olafur Eliasson (born 1967) is guided by a keen interest in perception, movement and lived experience, as well as those of the communities in which he works. Best known for his large-scale installation, Weather Project, which occupied the Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall in 2003, Eliasson often makes use of elementary materials such as light, water and temperature-controlled mist to create an immersive or spiritual experience for his viewers. His practice is not limited to the confines of the museums and galleries where he shows, but also involves local communities through architectural projects, interventions in public spaces and artistic, social and environmental education programs. This volume presents an overview of Eliasson’s 30-year career, including a selection of site-specific works, and features a collection of texts chosen by the artist that have inspired his practice.
Published by Marciano Art Foundation. Edited by Stephanie Emerson. Text by Gloria Sutton.
In collaboration with Sigur Rós musician Jónsi, Icelandic-Danish artist Olafur Eliasson (born 1967) conceived a complex installation for his site-specific exhibition at the Marciano Art Foundation. Using projected light and the existing architecture of the museum, he created a dynamic shadow play referencing both Los Angeles' history of filmmaking and the gallery's former function as a theater.
PUBLISHER
BOOK FORMAT Hardcover, 7.25 x 9.25 in. / 56 pgs / 25 color.
PUBLISHING STATUS Pub Date 3/19/2019 Active
DISTRIBUTION D.A.P. Exclusive Catalog: SPRING 2019 p. 131
PRODUCT DETAILS ISBN 9780999221518TRADE List Price: $30.00 CAD $45.00 GBP £27.00
AVAILABILITY Out of stock
STATUS: Out of stock
Temporarily out of stock pending additional inventory.
Published by Walther König, Köln. Edited by Anna Engberg-Pedersen, Joanna Warsza, Christina Werner. Introduction by Joanna Warsza. Foreword by Olafur Eliasson.
This self-portrait of Olafur Eliasson’s famous studio in Berlin conveys how Eliasson’s artworks are made and thought about before they enter the world, reversing the relationship between final artworks and artistic processes.
Published by Louisiana Museum of Modern Art. Edited by Michael Juul Holm, Anna Engberg-Pedersen. Afterword by Poul Erik Třjner.
Riverbed features Danish-Icelandic installation artist Olafur Eliasson’s (born 1967) dramatic piece of the same name. A site-specific installation at the Louisana Museum in 2014, the monumental work entailed a huge landscape of rocks from Iceland and streaming water, captured in this volume by Iwan Baan.
Published by Koenig Books. Edited by Matilda Olof-Ors. Foreword by Daniel Birnbaum, Ann-Sofi Noring, Kerstin Brunnberg. Introduction by Matilda Olof-Ors. Text by Daniel Birnbaum, Olafur Eliasson, Timothy Morton.
Olafur Eliasson (born 1967) engages the public sphere through sculpture, photography, film, installation and site-specific pieces that explore perception, movement and embodied experience. This superbly produced overview of his three-decade-long practice offers a full account of his numerous projects, from early pieces such as Beauty (1993), in which a spotlight shines on the mist produced by thousands of droplets, to the ambitious works produced from his Berlin studio, where he collaborates with architects, art historians, technicians, engineers, designers and cooks. With essays by Eliasson, Daniel Birnbaum and Timothy Morton, and spectacular production including mylar paper changes, Olafur Eliasson: Reality Machines is the new definitive account of this artist’s prolific oeuvre.
Published by Louisiana Museum of Modern Art. Edited by Michael Juul Holm, Anna Engberg-Pedersen. Text by Marie Laurberg, Olafur Eliasson, Timothy Morton, Poul Erik Třjner, et al.
In the fall of 2014 the internationally acclaimed Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson (born 1967) showed the major solo exhibition Riverbed at Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark. The exhibition included a monumental site-specific intervention—a huge landscape of rocks and streaming water—occupying the main part of Louisiana's exhibition space in what was his first solo show in the renowned museum, located on the outskirts of Copenhagen. The installation radically transforms the museum and the visitors' journey through this reconstructed space: it comes to life through the visitors' encounters with one another, extending from inside the museum to the world outside. This book introduces the artist and the ideas behind the exhibition to a broader audience through interviews, dialogues and an introductory essay by Louisiana curator Marie Laurberg. Other contributors include Niels Albertsen, Pireeni Sundaralingam, Timothy Morton, Lone Frank, Andreas Roepstorff, Minik Rosing and the EU commissioner for Climate, Connie Hedegaard.
Published by Walther König, Köln. Edited by Anna Engberg-Pedersen, Hu Fang, Huang Shan, Lu Jia.
Containing almost every type of fold and page insert imaginable—from pasted-in accordion folds to bisected pages that allow for multiple combinations of images—this incredibly elaborate artist’s book from Olafur Eliasson (born 1967) is based on a recent project for a garden in China.
Published by Crymogea. Foreword by Halldór B. Runólfsson. Introduction by Hjálmar Sveinsson.
When Reykjavík's i8 Gallery placed an idiosyncratic call for photographs of cars stranded in rivers, more than 100 photographs were entered. Renowned Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson (born 1967) selected 35 photos to include in the final work. The publication includes these photographs, along with creative attempts to explain how the cars ended up in the glacial rivers.
PUBLISHER Crymogea
BOOK FORMAT Paperback, 6.75 x 9 in. / 44 pgs / 36 color.
PUBLISHING STATUS Pub Date 6/30/2011 Out of print
DISTRIBUTION D.A.P. Exclusive Catalog: FALL 2011 p. 131
PRODUCT DETAILS ISBN 9789935420084TRADE List Price: $35.00 CAD $40.00
Published by Walther König, Köln. Text by Daniel Birnbaum.
One of the most important artists of his generation, Olafur Eliasson (born 1967) creates immersive environments and spectacular public installations that probe the cognitive aspects of vision and transform the act of looking into a social experience. Merging art and science, Eliasson engages the observer as participant, challenging the passive viewing experience by utilizing such elements as temperature, smell, moisture and light to trigger physical sensations. Olafur Eliasson: Inner City Out documents the artist's first project in Berlin, where he has lived and worked for many years. Designed for the Martin-Gropius-Bau, and curated by Daniel Birnbaum, it examines the relationship between the museum and the city, bridging the two through ephemeral installations placed in various locations throughout the city as well as within the museum itself.
Catalogue Raisonné of the Books Take Your Time, Volume 2
Published by Walther König, Köln. Foreword by Luca Cerizza. Text by Olafur Eliasson.
With its exposed spine stitching and variety of paper stocks, this survey of Olafur Eliasson's very rarely seen artist's books elevates his work in bookmaking to the status of his better-known projects, such as his New York waterfalls, and is indeed an artist's book in itself. Printed Matter closely examines 25 of Eliasson's books dating back to 1997, and reveals a whole oeuvre of artist's books—57 titles in all—that will come as a revelation to those who may not closely identify the artist with this medium. Eliasson's exhibition catalogues are always designed with pronounced care, and many are already long out of print or hard to find. Here, in spreads and thorough annotations, we encounter his considered musings on book form and design, and the complex process of book collaboration. Printed Matter also supplies a bibliography of all of Eliasson's books to date, alongside an interview with the artist.
Published by Walther König/Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary. Edited by Eva Ebersberger. Text by Daniela Zyman, Daniel Birnbaum.
Olafur Eliasson, one of today’s most acclaimed contemporary artists, and David Adjaye, a rising architecture star, have engaged in a unique collaboration. Eliasson’s light installation “Your Black Horizon,” which debuted at the 2005 Venice Biennale, was conceived from the start as a hybridization of both of their practices. The piece consists of a light, representing a horizon line, that emanates through a narrow gap in an architectural structure. This is the only light source, and it runs around the entire dark gallery space, without any visual obstruction. The optical illusion that is achieved is that of a reversed horizon line. This publication is presented in conjunction with the installation of this project in Croatia. Critic and curator Daniel Birnbaum, writer Eva Ebersberger and curator Daniela Zyman contribute in-depth essays, which are accompanied by large-scale spreads of the project.
Hans Ulrich Obrist and Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson have known each other for many years, and have worked together intimately--on exhibitions, book projects, performances and more. Their legendary conversations, gathered here, are revealing, challenging, philosophical--and essential to both oeuvres.
Published by Walther König, Köln. Foreword by Olafur Eliasson. Interview by Hans Ulrich Obrist.
The Goose Lake Trail through the remote highlands of Iceland winds across glaciers and moving sands. This deceptively delicate volume, with its cloth cover and topographic end-papers, documents a road trip there in Olafur Eliasson's "survival car," as Hans Ulrich Obrist dubbed it in his journey-long interview with the artist. Eliasson writes of the drive: "At one point the ground under the car started to shift softly as if the whole area were made of jelly… I said that this was not unusual at all, and that I do this every summer... The image of the car sinking through the sand, carrying us into the underground glacial river hovered continually in the back of my head. Luckily Hans Ulrich believed me. Turning to the window while looking at the surprising appearance of water shooting up everywhere around us, he calmly prepared the next question." Landscape photographs by Eliasson and text by Obrist.
Visitors to the Autostadt automotive theme park in Wolfsburg, Germany, have recently been treated to a walk-through living greenhouse, a breezeway whose walls are made of rows of potted plants, open from April to September. The rack that holds the pots in place is openwork, and structurally speaking not unlike the one under Jeff Koons's Puppy, but Eliasson goes one step further by inviting viewers to move through the inside of the piece, and by animating it to rotate around them, pouring out seasonal scents. Eliasson's goal, realized here with great success and to great acclaim, is to bring viewers into a verdant, flourishing space. This petite, elegant hardcover documents the Scent Tunnel project and follows it through a full season, listing the flowering times of its plants and considering the work and its olfactory elements from both scientific and art-historical perspectives.
Published by Hatje Cantz. Essays by Frederic Brown, Rodney Cotterill, Jakob Jakobsen, Karl Holmquist, Frida Björk Ingvarsdóttir, Anders V. Munch, Svend Madsen, Ingo Niermann, Gitte Yrskou, Andrej Przywara, Isreal Rosenfield, Adam Szymscyk and Sheena Wagstaff.
In Olafur Eliasson's exhibition The Blind Pavilion for the Danish pavilion at the most recent Venice Biennale, virtually all the strategies that the artist had employed up until now were activated: mirror reflections, glass kaleidoscopes, stretches of stairway, architectural interventions, and camera obscuras. An all-encompassing exhibition, it cancelled out the dividing lines between work and viewer, between outside and inside, between art and science. A parallel counterpart to the pavilion, rather than a mere representation of it, is the book The Blind Pavilion. Created by Eliasson in close collaboration with Danish author Svend Úge Madsen, who has persistently challenged our notions of time and space in his writings, The Blind Pavilion gathers writing by authors, poets, and theoreticians who were invited to contribute texts that explore our constantly shifting and ever-evolving capacity for "orienting" ourselves. The texts serve as contributions to an examination of how we physically and psychologically orient ourselves to the world--and of what happens when we are deprived of one or more of our orientation possibilities, for example our ability to hear and remember, to expect something, or to experience the passage of time.
Published by Hatje Cantz. Essays by Jonathan Crary, Holger Broeker, Richard Dawkins, and Annelie Lütgens.
Olafur Eliasson's installation The Weather Project cast a veritable spell over visitors to the Tate Museum of Modern Art in London as they gazed in wonder into a glowing artificial sun shrouded in mist in an exhibition setting transformed by the work into a neo-romantic landscape. In his installations, the Danish-Icelandic artist focuses on the factors that influence human perception in the age of technology--an approach that is more timely today than ever before. In an era in which our relationship to the world around us is shaped by the mediatization of human perception and our awareness of fundamental environmental loss, the juxtaposition of the natural and the artificial in Eliasson's art compels us to reassess our notions about the authentic experience of nature. Works concerned with the phenomenon of light play an important role within his oeuvre, and they are the subject of this publication. Featuring an index of the 138 light and mirror installations completed between 1991 and 2004, this splendidly illustrated volume describes all of the essential aspects of this complex work.
Published by Hatje Cantz. Artwork by Olafur Eliasson. Text by Susanne Gaensheimer.
Since the 1990s, Olafur Eliasson has been exploring cognitive and physical phenomena as we know them from the natural sciences and nature. He uses both technically sophisticated equipment and deceptively simple means such as water or light to create artificial landscapes and moments of perception that let viewers perceive or reenact natural phenomena. Their strongly atmospheric but entirely constructed nature makes viewers become painfully conscious of how far modern civilization has progressed from immediate experience; they question the acceptance of authenticity in the area of perception. This lavish, oversized book, published in an edition of only 1,500 copies and conceived in cooperation with the artist, features a series of landscape photographs by Eliasson from his native Iceland, exploring the limits and conventions of our traditional view of landscape. They show that our perception of nature has been fundamentally affected by cultural influences, memories and expectations.
Published by Walther König, Köln. Edited by Eckard Schneider. Essays by Olafur Eliasson, Marianne Krogh Jensen, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Andreas Spiegl, Rudolf Sagmeister.
Olafur Eliasson belongs to the generation of artists who spent the 90s exploring and expanding the boundaries between art, science, and nature, and their subjective and objective perception. Using fog, water, plants, and soil, he and landscape architect Gunther Vogt completely transformed the rigorously concrete and glass Kunsthaus Bregenz, pictured here in objective installation photographs and subjective texts by the artist.
PUBLISHER Walther König, Köln
BOOK FORMAT Paperback, 8.25 x 6.75 in. / 73 pgs / 130 color
PUBLISHING STATUS Pub Date 2/2/2002 Out of print
DISTRIBUTION D.A.P. Exclusive Catalog: SPRING 2002
PRODUCT DETAILS ISBN 9783883755052SDNR30 List Price: $21.00 CAD $25.00
Published by Hatje Cantz. Essay by Jessica Morgan. Foreword by Jill Medvedow.
This new catalogue accompanies the first major U.S. museum presentation of work by internationally celebrated Danish artist Olafur Eliasson, whose photography, sculpture, and installation work are distinguished by poetic economy of means and a quiet, elegant beauty. Eliasson's work typically transforms the museum or outdoor setting through installations that combine the artist's concerns with both the ephemeral natural effects of light, water, and wind and more tangible materials such as thorns, moss, and grass. His work is characterized by simplicity of approach. Despite its often-remarkable effects--rainbows, massive waterfalls, walls of steam--the technology required to create the work is relatively simple and clearly exposed for the viewer to observe. Eliasson has also worked extensively in the field of photography, frequently documenting the landscape of Iceland, his home for many years. Presented in serial grid format, Eliasson approaches photography with the mind of an amateur scientist, documenting different cave formations or icebergs in dozens of studies that take on the appearance of independent sculptural objects.
Olafur Eliasson: Nel tuo tempo
Olafur Eliasson: Reality Projector
TYT (Take your time), Vol. 7: Olafur Eliasson - Open House
Riverbed: Olafur Eliasson at Louisiana
Olafur Eliasson: Reality Machines
Olafur Eliasson: Riverbed
Olafur Eliasson: Never Tired of Looking at Each Other, Only Mountains and I
Olafur Eliasson: Cars in Rivers
Olafur Eliasson: Inner City Out
Olafur Eliasson: Printed Matter
Olafur Eliasson & David Adjaye: Your Black Horizon
Hans Ulrich Obrist & Olafur Eliasson: The Conversation Series
Olafur Eliasson: The Goose Lake Trail
Olafur Eliason: Scent Tunnel
Olafur Eliasson: The Blind Pavilion
Olafur Eliasson: Your Lighthouse
Olafur Eliasson
Olafur Eliasson: The Mediated Motion
Olafur Eliasson