OLAFUR ELIASSON, REYKJAVIK, ICELAND, AUGUST 2020
When I look at my instagram feed an artist who crops up in posts more than any other is Olafur Eliasson. His art is thoughtful, strong and visually stunning and at the same time he uses it very skilfully to deliver important messages about the fragility of the planet, our environment, global warming etc. In the art market it is always a risk predicting the future but I am willing to bet that his work will continue to increase in demand and become more and more desirable to collect: good news because he uses the revenues produced to create and develop more and more projects.
In Reykjavik last Summer we visited the Olafur Eliasson exhibition at the i8 Gallery, owned by Borkur Arnarson, arguably the best and most well respected gallery and gallery owner in Iceland. The highlight of the exhibition was a beautiful watercolour ‘Beyond Human Time’ which Eliasson created by using fragments of glacial ice which were placed on top of thick paper that had been prepared with thin washes of colour. As the ice melted it created swirls and shapes of colour with the coloured wash, a combination of human and natural interaction between the ice, the wash and the paper to create the artwork.
Several days later, whilst driving the circle route around Iceland, we visited the Diamond Beach next to the Jokulsarlon glacial lagoon. As chunks of ice break off from the glacier and are washed out to sea they are pushed back onto the black volcanic beach by the tide and the waves, creating a stunning combination of black sand, blue and transparent glacial ice, forever moved and shaped by the sea and the wind. Witnessing this reminded me of how nature and human interaction continually combine to create unique and beautiful art and experiences, in this instance by my presence on the beach and the photographs that I took.
My first close up encounter with glacial ice was when I visited ‘Ice Watch London’, the installation that was placed outside the Tate Modern in London by Olafur Eliasson in December 2018. Large chunks of glacier were lifted from the sea after breaking away from the Arctic ice sheets, transported and placed outside the gallery and left to melt next to the River Thames. A reminder of climate change and our response to the impact that it already has on the future of the planet.
I thought of this when I had returned to London after my trip last year; very often the most meaningful and beautiful art combines beauty for its own sake with a physical response from the recipient. Eliasson uses this with incredible sensitivity and skill, always delivering a powerful message to the viewer.
