December 2, 2007: Olafur Eliasson at SFMOMA
The Olafur Elaisson’s Take Your Time exhibition at the San Francisco MOMA is truly amazing. It is the first time that I have seen his work, other than in reproduction. He is clearly interested in how the viewer experiences his work, there are 21 projects installed on the 5th floor. Each project tend to have its own room and there are several pieces built specifically for this exhibition including One Way Colour Tunnel, 2007
an amazing colour-effect and acrylic mirror corridor tunnel that you walk through, built to span the museum’s 5th floor bridge. His beautiful fan project Ventalator, from 1997 is in constant motion in the large entrance foyer as you enter the museum and his BMW H2R project car encased in ice in a large freezing room- (9 degrees Farenheit) which is on a different floor.
What is now clearly apparent to me, is that some of the ideas I have been thinking about for my own work with light need to be filtered and clarified in relation to my experience of Olafur Eliasson’s work. His Room for One Colour, 1997 for example is a room with intense yellow light similar to one I have been thinking about making.
He has repurposed the entrance waiting room, as you leave the 5th floor elevator you enter this room where the yellow light from eleven yellow bright monofrequency lights, mounted on the ceiling is so intense that all other colour- in people’s clothes for example is washed away- and seems either yellow or black. There is a complementary blue violet ghosting from the exterior natural light at one end of the room where he as installed Space Reversal, 2007 a mirrored space using mirror foil that you stand on a small bridge to look at yourself reflected in every direction lit by a window to the outside.
Overall I found the exhibition overwhelming- it was too much and at times I had vertigo experiencing some of the projects. I realize now that I am not interested in making work this spectacular. I have much more modest ambitions. I am not interested in overwhelming the viewer in this way. My intentions are to be more subtle and softer, and more domestic in scale. I realized I’m more interested in light that can be viewed within a domestic or office type of space. One of the dilemmas of the contemporary museum is that so often everything has to be on such a grand scale, such a grand gesture like grand manner history painting. Perhaps it is that the museum is competing with so many spectacles of modern life- the football match, the cinema and that as viewers used to the overwhelming aspects of life within the city we are conditioned to desire a spectacle.