chief curator and artistic director of fondation louis vuitton suzanne pagé: ‘olafur eliasson often bases his work on cutting-edge advances in scientific thought, placing renewed emphasis on the situation of humanity in the world. tapping into the visitors’ capacity for empathy, the artist strives to activate their participation, implicating them in a complex, multi-sensorial experience. the constant oscillation between shadow/light, presence/absence, and affirmation/doubt causes us to question our visual perceptions and, in consequence, our convictions.’

‘to this end, the route through the exhibition is derived from the geometry of the circle and founded upon the underlying principle of circularity. by bringing viewers into “contact” with a meteorite, an extraterrestrial object with a magical, even symbolic, character, the exhibition begins with a gesture intended by the artist to place visitors in a state of perceptiveness that expands the horizons of our imagination.’

Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Elliasson is well-known for his work in sculptures and large-scale installations, often utilizing light or other natural elements. Recently though he’s been heading into new territory,recontextualizing the paintings of landscape artist J.M.W. Turner into circular paintings, bringing the works to a pure form.

Turner’s ability to shape and frame light in his paintings has had a significant impact on my work….In the Turner colour experiments, I’ve isolated light and colour in Turner’s works in order to extract his sense of ephemera from the objects of desire that his paintings have become. The schematic arrays of colours on round canvases generate a feeling of endlessness and allow the viewer to take in the artwork in a decentralised, meandering way.

It’s an interesting idea from a conceptual standpoint, that he’s transformed the light and colors that J.M.W. Turner saw into a sweeping, endless gradient. The abstraction while seemingly simple is intensely scientific. Eliasson is analysing pigments, paint production and application of colour in order to mix paint in the exact color for each nanometre of the visible light spectrum. An ambitious project with really impactful results.