Your watercolour machine, 2009

- Projector, water, prism, mirror, mirror foil, projection foil, rubber, stainless steel, aluminium, wood, motor

Olafur Eliasson investigates how bodily and sensuous experiences lead to insights. Throughout his artistic production he has been concerned with how the physical world, nature’s fundamental elements, and basic phenomena such as light, darkness and reflections can
result in cognitive experience.

In the installation Your watercolour machine, a floodlight projector directs its beams onto a prism, causing the light to be dispersed into separate colours which are then ingeniously reflected in mirrors and the water surface of the pool and then, finally, projected onto a vertical screen, or canvas, where the field of colours meets us as a picture. A motor tilts the pool at regular intervals, disturbing the surface of the water, which in turn distorts the colours on the canvas, causing corresponding wavy movements.

In Eliasson’s work the aesthetic experience arises as a response to a range of very concrete elements. The image on the classic, two-dimensional canvas arises out of basic physical phenomena, in the space occupied by the spectator. Eliasson’s installations create situations in which such new relationships between the work of art and the spectator
can emerge.

Danish-Icelandic Olafur Eliasson lives in Copenhagen and Berlin. In 1995, he established Studio Olafur Eliasson in Berlin – a cross-disciplinary laboratory for his artistic praxis, attempting to generate new dialogues between art and its surroundings. Eliasson’s work deals with scientific research and aesthetic perception. 

The starting point for the majority of his work is nature or natural elements such as air, light, ice or water, but nature is never the only motif or dimension of his work. Nature is a way to investigate the phenomenological relationship between the artwork and the spectator. The objective is to intensify the sensory perception of the artwork. For Eliasson, nature is not natural but constructed by our very own gaze upon it. His work toys with our perception of the above-mentioned natural elements as authentic, even though they are artificially created. His work includes photography, sculptures and installations in art forums or large projects adapted to the cityscape.

In 1995, Eliasson completed his education the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, and has since participated in an impressive range of projects, solo and group exhibitions. Most recently, he created The New York Waterfalls, 2008 and The colour circles series, 2009.