The transparent simplicity and experiential nature of Olafur Eliasson's work has built his reputation as one of the world's most accessible creators of contemporary art.
Why you should listen
Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson works with sculpture, painting, photography, film, installation and digital media. His art is driven by his interests in perception, movement, embodied experience and feelings of self and community. Not limited to the confines of the museum and gallery, his practice engages the public through architectural projects, interventions in civic space, arts education, policy-making and climate action.
Eliasson is internationally renowned for his public installations that challenge the way we perceive and cocreate our environments. In 2003, he made The Weather Project, a glowing indoor sun shrouded in mist at Tate Modern's Turbine Hall in London. In 2008, he constructed four expansive artificial waterfalls along the Manhattan and Brooklyn shorelines for New York City Waterfalls. He has also explored art's potential to address climate change. For Ice Watch, he brought large blocks of free-floating glacial ice to the city centers of Copenhagen in 2014, Paris in 2015 and London in 2018. Passersby could touch fragments of the Greenlandic glacial ice and witness its fragility as it disappeared before them. In 2019, he was named UNDP Goodwill Ambassador for climate action and the sustainable development goals.
Located in Berlin, Studio Olafur Eliasson comprises a large team of craftsmen, architects, archivists, researchers, administrators, cooks, art historians and specialized technicians.