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Olafur Eliasson
Eye see you, 2006

Olafur Eliasson, Eye see you, 2006, Commissioned by Louis Vuitton Malletier. Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary Collection, Photo: Studio Olafur Eliasson

Olafur Eliasson, Eye see you, 2006, Commissioned by Louis Vuitton Malletier. Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary Collection. Installation view: OLAFUR ELIASSON: BAROQUE BAROQUE, Das Winterpalais des Prinz Eugen, 2015. Photo: Anders Sune Berg

Installation view: Abundant Futures. Works from the TBA21 Collection, Centro de Creación Contemporánea de Andalucía C3A, Córdoba, Spain, 2022

Photo: Roberto Ruiz

Olafur Eliasson

Collection

BAROQUE BAROQUE

Stainless steel, aluminum, color-effect filter glass, light bulb
230 x 120 x 110 cm
Commissioned by Louis Vuitton Malletier

Exploring the properties of light and the way humans experience it, Olafur Eliasson has engaged for decades with light as a medium and a subject of investigation. Eye see you invites viewers to see themselves in relation to the most ancestral force that keeps us alive—the sun—as a source of nourishment and energy, a potential ally, but also a potential threat in an era of climate crisis. The installation consists of a “solar cooker”—a prefabricated mirror-polished bowl that uses solar radiation for cooking in hot climates—mounted on a tripod. A sodium lamp attached at its center emits a bright yellow monofrequency light. Two dichromatic glass discs installed in front of the lamp change color depending on the viewer’s position and movement. Eye see you critically juxtaposes the absolutism of the seeing subject as a fixed, one-eyed, and highly specified persona (eye) and the technological object’s reductive thingness, which, in the installation, refracts the human gaze. “I am keen to make works that exist to be seen while also inviting reflections on how they are seen,” Eliasson comments.

PAST LOANS (Selection)

Group exhibition: Abundant Futures
Venue: C3A Centro de Creación Contemporánea de Andalucía, Córdoba
Curator: Daniela Zyman
Exhibition 1 April 2022 - 5 March 2023