Artist uses elements of the natural world to see it in new ways

Transcript

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Amna Nawaz: A globally renowned artist who uses elements of the natural world to make us see that world in new ways.

Senior arts correspondent Jeffrey Brown spoke with artist Olafur Eliasson in Los Angeles our arts and culture series, Canvas.

Jeffrey Brown: For nearly six months in 2003, the sun set inside a giant hall in London’s Tate Modern museum, an artificial effect creating a strange otherworld, made from hundreds of lamps, a mirrored ceiling and a mist machine.

Called The Weather Project, this art installation was a sensation, attracting some two million visitors.

It’s creator, artist Olafur Eliasson.

Olafur Eliasson, Artist: My art is with the sort of what does it mean to see? What does it mean to experience? Can I see my own seeing? You know, maybe it’s not what I am looking at, but maybe its the looking itself. Wow.

Jeffrey Brown: Wow. Can I see my own seeing?

Olafur Eliasson: Yes. Well, what is imagination? Are we good at imagining things?

Jeffrey Brown: Years later, Eliasson is still concocting forms and environments and still asking himself and us such questions. We met this fall in Los Angeles, where a survey of his work at the Museum of Contemporary Art-Geffen is part of the Southern California-wide art event PST ART: Art & Science Collide.

He’s titled this exhibition OPEN.

Olafur Eliasson: And thought as a title, that’s not bad — if you see a banner somewhere that says “LA MOCA: OPEN.

Jeffrey Brown: You like that because it means, come in?

Olafur Eliasson: There’s something about democratizing the accessibility to culture and to art, you know, to say you are open, come and see the exhibition, we are open. There’s also the openness, of course, of the visitor. You know, are you open?

Jeffrey Brown: Now 57, Eliasson grew up in Iceland and Denmark and has long been based in Berlin, where he works with a large team, including craftspeople, architects, archivists and researchers.

His often large-scale artworks are regularly shown in museums throughout the world, as well as in open landscapes, as here in Qatar in 2023 in a piece titled The Curious Desert, and in public spaces, including in 2008, a series of waterfalls in New York City.

These are works that capture the eye, for sure, but also, he hopes, our minds and emotions, especially when it comes to thinking about the most important phenomenon in his life as an artist, climate change.

Olafur Eliasson: So I’m interested in climate change. I’m in the environment, in nature, very interested in how do humans experience nature.

In Iceland, I saw Arctic nature, which is very fragile. I saw that firsthand. And with a little bit of change in temperature, it completely changed it. So when I heard about, like, what is that, 30 years ago, when I first started to hear about climate change and global warming, I said, oh, I know that they — I know what they’re talking about.

And it so happened that my works dealt with the perception of nature and that evidently nowadays is the perception of climate change.

Jeffrey Brown: Sometimes head on. He worked with geologist Minik Rosing to bring free-floating centuries-old pieces of icebergs from a Greenland fjord to public squares in Europe, an intervention in urban life full of wonder and beauty, but also a warning as the ice melted over time.

In Los Angeles, he’s exhibiting a different version of ice work, a series created by melting ice mixed with different colored paints.

Olafur Eliasson: It’s glacier ice, 20,000 years old glacier ice put there, and then some ink or some paint, and then it lays there for about a day. So what each painting is, is a day of melting ice, 20,000 years gone in 10 hours.

Jeffrey Brown: A serious message mixed with some humor for the artist himself.

Olafur Eliasson: I love asking ice blocks to paint for me. It’s like, oh, do you want to paint together? Yes, OK, you paint and I go and eat.

Jeffrey Brown: The fun house aspect of Eliasson’s work is on display here in large kaleidoscopes, playing with optics and light, but also in this work with trash that floats above us, the seas, space, maybe our daily lives.

Olafur Eliasson: Maybe I want people to come in and more embrace this notion of wondering, right? This is a wonder. Imagine to make a wonder with trash. I like that idea.

Jeffrey Brown: Also crucial for him, our participation as what he calls co-producers of his work, making them come alive, bringing our own meanings and perceptions. It goes back to his idea of being open to art and different ways of seeing the world.

Olafur Eliasson: If we can expand a little bit the idea of how much can we actually see, what’s the limits of my perceiving of the world, then maybe what seems to be very abstract is a little bit less abstract, because I kind of understand, if I open up my mind, if I challenge my way of seeing things, I can see more.

Jeffrey Brown: Olafur Eliasson’s exhibition OPEN remains on view until next July.

For the “PBS News Hour,” I’m Jeffrey Brown at MOCA Geffen in Los Angeles.