Olafur Eliasson: Your unexpected encounter

Olafur Eliasson: Your unexpected encounter
June 7, 2024 – February 9, 2025
Istanbul Museum of Modern Art
Kılıçali Paşa, Tophane İskele Cd
No:1/1, 34433 Beyoğlu/İstanbul
Türkiye

Olafur Eliasson: Your unexpected encounter opens at Istanbul Modern on June 7. The exhibition offers an opportunity to explore the artist’s three-decade-long practice and the themes central to it.

Sponsored by the Eczacıbaşı Group and VitrA, the comprehensive exhibition features nearly 40 works, including new productions. Curated by Öykü Özsoy Sağnak, Nilay Dursun, and Ümit Mesci from the museum’s curatorial team, the exhibition focuses on water, light, color, perception, movement, geometry, and the environment.

Eliasson emphasizes that his works are only complete when viewers engage with them and considers this active participation to be an important component of his work. Through the audience’s dynamic process of discovery, the phenomena Eliasson presents—whether in varied contexts or scales—frequently results in unique experiences.

Created specifically for the exhibition, “Dusk to dawn, Bosporus,” connects viewers to the museum site, bringing the changing colors of the Bosphorus into the gallery space. The work, which includes hand-blown glass panels stacked on driftwood, combines Eliasson’s interest in the natural properties of color, light, and water. It provides a preview of other color experiments that arrive later in the exhibit.

The site-specific work “Sunset kaleidoscope” continues to traverse the boundaries between inside and outside. Looking out to the Bosphorus, the view is transformed by movement, bringing a unique narrative of the history of the city and the contemporary space within the exhibition.

Without this encounter with Istanbul 30 years ago, I would not be the artist I am today

Olafur Eliasson

Olafur Eliasson, who participated in the 5th International Istanbul Biennial organized in 1997 under the title “On Life, Beauty, Translations and Other Difficulties” curated by Rosa Martínez with his work “Beauty,” said that he is excited to return to Istanbul with his exhibition “Your unexpected encounter.” “Without that encounter with Istanbul almost three decades ago, I would not be the artist I am today, so it is exciting to return to Istanbul, a city that has a lot of personal significance for me.

I am particularly intrigued by the city’s unique position on the Bosphorus, which is an important point of connection for maritime traffic. Navigation, orientation, and the sea have been crucial themes in my art over the years, but they have a special meaning here—in the new, permanent work I created for Istanbul Modern and in my exhibition ‘Your unexpected encounter.’ Visitors can take their time inside the museum, orienting themselves among the artworks, and then turn their attention to the outside, where ships pass by the gallery en route to destinations around the world,” Eliasson said.

Light and its ephemeral properties stand out as prominent subjects in the exhibition. Lenses, reflective surfaces, projections, colored glass, and kaleidoscopes featured in Eliasson’s works allow the artist to conduct experiments with perception, space, and geometry.

Forming part of the artist’s ongoing “Colour experiments” series, the artist’s watercolor works are formed around the basis of developing a new color theory and reflect his productions on the axis of water, environment, and color.

Eliasson’s career-long investigation into how we perceive and co-create our environments is further explored with a number of artworks that address the climate crisis. The photo series “The glacier melt series 1999/2019” demonstrates the striking rate at which Iceland’s glaciers are retreating, while also connecting Istanbul with Iceland—a country which is formative to Eliasson’s practice.

Olafur Eliasson: Your unexpected encounter opens on 7th June, 2024 until 9th February, 2025 Istanbul Museum of Modern Art

©2024 Olafur Eliasson