10 Nov Olafur Eliasson: A Harmonious Cycle of Interconnected Nows
Olafur Eliasson creates work that’s truly of our time. This Icelandic-Danish artist wows audiences with large-scale installations that play with perceptions of light, colour and other natural phenomena, while simultaneously focusing attention on environmental issues that increasingly threaten our planet.
This inaugural exhibition of Azabudai Hills Gallery, located within the towering Azabudai Hills development, explores ideas central to the artwork that Eliasson has created for the lobby of Azabudai Hills Mori JP Tower. This installation (which shares its title with the exhibition) consists of four 3D sculptures made up of a complex series of polyhedra. These sculptures, made with recycled metal and suspended in an atrium, depict the twisting trajectory of a single point while alluding to the connection between all of creation at an atomic level.
The exhibition features no fewer than 15 works shown in Japan for the first time, including the stunning ‘Firefly biosphere (falling magma star)’ (2023), which is a geometric sculpture containing intricately refracted light. Another must-see is ‘Your split second house’ (2010), in which strobe-illuminated water droplets travel through a dark, 20m-long space.
Olafur Eliasson
Born in 1967, raised in Denmark and Iceland, Olafur Eliasson is now based in Berlin and Copenhagen. He founded Studio Olafur Eliasson in Berlin in 1995, which has developed into a diverse group of professionals, including craftspeople, architects, archivists, researchers, art historians, chefs and programmers. In 2014, Eliasson and architect Sebastian Behmann founded Studio Other Space to explore art and architecture. Eliasson has had solo exhibitions in major museums around the world, including in Kanazawa and Tokyo, Japan. He frequently participates in major international exhibitions and remains a leader of the contemporary art world’s efforts to raise awareness of climate change. In 2019, Eliasson was appointed as a Goodwill Ambassador of the United Nations Development Programme.He was awarded the 34th Praemium Imperiale (Sculpture) in 2023.
“A harmonious cycle of interconnected nows” is the name of an artwork by Olafur Eliasson that is exhibited in the office lobby of the Azabudai Hills Mori JP Tower. This exhibition will further explore the theme addressed in this work through new installations and other works, including three-dimensional works. This work is composed of four sculptures, each approximately 3 meters in diameter, hanging continuously in a 15-meter-high atrium. Eliasson, who grew up surrounded by the natural beauty of Denmark and Iceland, has been a leading voice in the contemporary art world in terms of addressing the urgent issues facing the world today, such as the climate crisis, and this is the first time Studio Olafur Eliasson has used recycled metal. This work is made up of a complex series of polyhedra that evokes the trajectory of a single point that twists as it moves. It alludes not only to the connections between all of creation at an atomic level, but also the invisible time and reciprocal connections across things, the magnetic forces newly generated by human activities and lives. Formally, the spirals derive from a geometrical shape known as a Lissajous curve. Normally two-dimensional graphs of complex harmonic motion, these curves were translated into three dimensions and their frequencies were adjusted to create a range of dynamic shapes. These spirals were then constructed from repeating, space-filling modules, making them resemble the growth of crystals or of coral reefs. The module – a polyhedron with eleven faces, known as a hendecahedron – comprises rhombi, kites, and triangles.
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