The ice melting series, 2002
Photo: Studio Olafur Eliasson
Loans
Collection
Twenty c-prints
Each: 22 x 33 cm
Overall: 103 x 189 cm
TBA21 Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary Collection
Olafur Eliasson’s engaged artistic practice is a response to social and environmental urgencies. Many of his recent works display the evidence of the climate emergency as ecological actors in their own right. Installations such as Ice Watch (2015), for which Eliasson harvested blocks of glacial ice from Greenland and brought them to Paris for the signing of the United Nations agreement on climate change, as well as to Copenhagen and London, where the ice blocks were left on the streets until they melted away, attempt to make global heating tangible. Eliasson’s series of landscape studies, often recording the transformations of Iceland’s rivers, caves, and glaciers, testify to a documentary approach where artmaking intersects with eco-critical claims.
The ice melting series consists of twenty photographs capturing ice melting on a surface of black volcanic pebbles. Arranged in a grid, each seemingly black-and-white photograph freezes a close-up view of a small fragment or membrane of ice. The series renders a cumulative sense of the terrain, the slow processes of transformation of thermic and geological activity, and the transitions from solid to liquid states. Eliasson intentionally skews the scale and selects points of view that highlight the viewer’s bodily relation to the photographic image, thereby engaging us in the process of measuring and positioning ourselves in relation to imperceptibly small occurrences that ultimately foreground our presence and complicity in the face of colossal change.
CURRENT LOANS
Group show: Remedios
Venue: C3A Centro de Creación Contemporánea de Andalucía, Córdoba
Curator: Daniela Zyman
Exhibition 14 April 2023 - March 2024
Born in Copenhagen, Denmark, in 1967. Lives in Copenhagen and Berlin, Germany.
Each: 22 x 33 cm
Overall: 103 x 189 cm
TBA21 Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary Collection
Olafur Eliasson’s engaged artistic practice is a response to social and environmental urgencies. Many of his recent works display the evidence of the climate emergency as ecological actors in their own right. Installations such as Ice Watch (2015), for which Eliasson harvested blocks of glacial ice from Greenland and brought them to Paris for the signing of the United Nations agreement on climate change, as well as to Copenhagen and London, where the ice blocks were left on the streets until they melted away, attempt to make global heating tangible. Eliasson’s series of landscape studies, often recording the transformations of Iceland’s rivers, caves, and glaciers, testify to a documentary approach where artmaking intersects with eco-critical claims.
The ice melting series consists of twenty photographs capturing ice melting on a surface of black volcanic pebbles. Arranged in a grid, each seemingly black-and-white photograph freezes a close-up view of a small fragment or membrane of ice. The series renders a cumulative sense of the terrain, the slow processes of transformation of thermic and geological activity, and the transitions from solid to liquid states. Eliasson intentionally skews the scale and selects points of view that highlight the viewer’s bodily relation to the photographic image, thereby engaging us in the process of measuring and positioning ourselves in relation to imperceptibly small occurrences that ultimately foreground our presence and complicity in the face of colossal change.
CURRENT LOANS
Group show: Remedios
Venue: C3A Centro de Creación Contemporánea de Andalucía, Córdoba
Curator: Daniela Zyman
Exhibition 14 April 2023 - March 2024
Born in Copenhagen, Denmark, in 1967. Lives in Copenhagen and Berlin, Germany.
The ice melting series, 2002, documentation, Studio Olafur Eliasson
Olaur Eliasson and Orri Páll Ormarsson: "I Am Nature Too," Morgunbladid, 2019
Ice Watch: Minik Rosing - The ice is almost like a living animal, video, Studio Olafur Eliasson, 2019
Anne McClintock, A fugue in fire and ice, video documentation, part of the public program of Territorial Agency: Oceans in Transformation, curated by Daniela Zyman, TBA21–Academy, 2020
Jaimey Hamilton Faris, Sisters of Ocean and Ice: On the Hydro-feminism of Kathy Jetn̄il-Kijiner and Aka Niviâna’s Rise: From One Island to Another, Shima Journal, 2019, on ocean-archive.org
Carlos Manuel Duarte, Dangerous climate change in the Arctic: Why should we care?, video documentation, part of the public program of Territorial Agency: Oceans in Transformation, curated by Daniela Zyman, TBA21–Academy, 2020, on ocean-archive.org
Hornby, Louise. Appropriating the Weather. Olafur Eliasson and Climate Control. Environmental Humanities 9.1 (May 2017), University of California. Full article here
Boetzkes, Amanda. Phenomenology and Interpretation Beyond the Flesh. Vol 32 Nn 4, September 2009, Association of Art Historians. Blackwell Publishing. Essay here
Olaur Eliasson and Orri Páll Ormarsson: "I Am Nature Too," Morgunbladid, 2019
Ice Watch: Minik Rosing - The ice is almost like a living animal, video, Studio Olafur Eliasson, 2019
Anne McClintock, A fugue in fire and ice, video documentation, part of the public program of Territorial Agency: Oceans in Transformation, curated by Daniela Zyman, TBA21–Academy, 2020
Jaimey Hamilton Faris, Sisters of Ocean and Ice: On the Hydro-feminism of Kathy Jetn̄il-Kijiner and Aka Niviâna’s Rise: From One Island to Another, Shima Journal, 2019, on ocean-archive.org
Carlos Manuel Duarte, Dangerous climate change in the Arctic: Why should we care?, video documentation, part of the public program of Territorial Agency: Oceans in Transformation, curated by Daniela Zyman, TBA21–Academy, 2020, on ocean-archive.org
Hornby, Louise. Appropriating the Weather. Olafur Eliasson and Climate Control. Environmental Humanities 9.1 (May 2017), University of California. Full article here
Boetzkes, Amanda. Phenomenology and Interpretation Beyond the Flesh. Vol 32 Nn 4, September 2009, Association of Art Historians. Blackwell Publishing. Essay here