The exhibition “Olafur Eliasson: Open” at The Geffen at MOCA in Los Angeles is Icelandic-Danish artist Olafur Eliasson’s first major solo exhibition in Los Angeles and is part of the landmark Getty initiative PST ART: Art & Science Collide. “Olafur Eliasson: Open“ features over a dozen works commissioned for MOCA, along with a selection of recent works organized around the artist’s research on perception, optical devices, physics and natural phenomena, navigational instruments, and color experimentation. The show runs until July 6, 2025.
Olafur Eliasson: Open / The Geffen at MOCA Los Angeles (XL). October 10, 2024.
Press text (excerpt):
The Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) is delighted to present Olafur Eliasson: OPEN from September 15, 2024 through July 6, 2025 at The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA. The first major solo exhibition of the Icelandic-Danish artist Olafur Eliasson (b. 1967, Copenhagen; lives and works in Berlin) in Los Angeles, OPEN is part of the landmark Getty initiative PST ART: Art & Science Collide and is organized by José Luis Blondet, Senior Curator, and Rebecca Lowery, Associate Curator, with Emilia Nicholson-Fajardo, Curatorial Assistant, and Anastasia Kahn, former Curatorial Assistant. Continuing Eliasson’s career-long exploration of light and color, geometry, and environmental awareness, Olafur Eliasson: OPEN presents a series of site-specific installations responding to MOCA Geffen’s building and the atmospheric conditions of Los Angeles.
Olafur Eliasson: OPEN features over a dozen works commissioned for MOCA, along with a selection of recent works organized around the artist’s research on perception, optical devices, physics and natural phenomena, navigational instruments, and color experimentation. Eliasson draws attention to the relativity of our perception and challenges habitual ways of seeing and experiencing the world. The exhibition is informed by the artist’s belief in the potential of inconclusiveness—the idea that every artwork contains an aspect that is radically open.
“Olafur Eliasson’s work is an invitation to explore, reconsider, and co-produce our relationship with the world around us,” said Johanna Burton, The Maurice Marciano Director. “His innovative use of light, color, and space transforms the familiar into the ephemerally extraordinary, encouraging a deeper engagement with the environment and our perceptions of it. This exhibition is a natural extension of MOCA’s commitment to environmental programming, as seen in our ongoing presentations and initiatives focused on climate change and sustainability.”
“In this ambitious project, Eliasson taps into the legacies of artists intimately tied to Los Angeles and MOCA’s rich history of experimentation and innovation,” said Blondet. “From Michael Asher’s site-specific interventions, to Maria Nordman’s exploration of space and time, to Robert Irwin’s perceptual experiments with light and space and James Turrell’s pioneering work in the use of light as a medium.”
“Eliasson is an artist of singular vision who combines scientific levels of precision with a poetic sensibility about the metaphysics of perception,” says co-curator Lowery. “His deep engagement with the specific architectural setting of The Geffen Contemporary will animate this beloved building in new ways for first-time and long-time visitors alike.”
OPEN is conceived as a number of fluid experiences staged in the vast industrial spaces of The Geffen Contemporary. The exhibition’s central gallery becomes a point of departure and return, welcoming visitors to meander throughout the museum as they interact with various optical devices that refract and reframe the building and its environments. OPEN offers unique explorations of light, perception, and interaction with the environment.
About Olafur Eliasson
The works of artist Olafur Eliasson (Icelandic-Danish, b. 1967) explore the relevance of art in the world at large. Since 1997, his wide-ranging solo shows—featuring installations, paintings, sculptures, photography, and film—have appeared in major museums around the globe. In 2003, he represented Denmark at the 50th Venice Biennale and later that year installed The weather project in Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall, London. Take your time: Olafur Eliasson, a survey exhibition organized by SFMOMA, traveled from 2007 until 2010 to various venues, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York. In 2018, the site-specific installation Reality projector transformed the Marciano Foundation in Los Angeles. Exhibitions in 2024 include Senin beklenmeidk karşılaman (Your unexpected encounter) at Istanbul Modern and Your curious journey, which opened at Singapore Art Museum (SAM) in May and will travel to Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, New Zealand; Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taiwan; Museum MACAN, Jakarta, Indonesia; and conclude at the Museum of Contemporary Art and Design, Manila, the Philippines.
Eliasson’s projects in public spaces include The New York City Waterfalls, 2008; Fjordenhus, Vejle, Denmark, 2018; Ice Watch, 2014; Seeing spheres, 2019, in San Francisco; and Atmospheric wave wall, 2020, in Chicago. Harpa Reykjavik Concert Hall and Conference Centre, 2011, for which Eliasson created the facades in collaboration with Henning Larsen Architects, won the Mies van der Rohe Award in 2013.
In 2012, Eliasson started the social business Little Sun, and in 2014, he and Sebastian Behmann founded Studio Other Spaces, an office for art and architecture. In 2019, Eliasson was named UNDP Goodwill Ambassador for climate action. In 2023, he received the Praemium Imperiale from the Japanese imperial family for outstanding contributions to the development, promotion, and progress of the arts.
Located in Berlin, Studio Olafur Eliasson comprises a large team of craftspeople, architects, archivists, researchers, administrators, cooks, art historians, and specialized technicians.
About PST Art: Art & Science Collide
Olafur Eliasson: OPEN is among more than 70 exhibitions and programs presented as part of PST ART. Returning in September 2024 with its latest edition, PST ART: Art & Science Collide, this landmark regional event explores the intersections of art and science, both past and present. PST ART is presented by Getty.
