Olafur Eliasson
We visited the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) of San Francisco (sfmoma.org) this Saturday. I had read about this exhibition by Olafur Eliasson in The Economist and realised it was going to be a great set of installations. The display was named "Take your time: Olafur Eliasson".

The Frozen Car was the first exhibit we saw. (the "art" name of the entry is "Your mobile expectations")



He made an ice sculpture around a BMW car and kept the whole thing frozen. They give you blankets before you enter this -14 degrees centigrade room. How did they move it to SFO from their studio in Berlin?

We went through his "One Way Color Tunnel" next and it was officially awesome! It's like walking inside a kaleidoscope.



You are surrounded by bold colors when you look forward but once you turn back everything is black. Okay, it's white in the picture below but it was black in the SFO installation!



Along with the 360 degrees room (see below), this was the entry I was looking forward to the most. Then we looked at the various minor geometric creations he did over the years, probably as a kid?

We moved on to his Dark Water exhibit (actual name: Notion Motion). It's a screen that shows glowing ripples of water projected on to a screen like in a cinema. If anything is 'ethereal' this is! We later went backstage to see how he got the exhibit up. It was just a flat puddle of water with a powerful floodlight reflecting off of it. The exhibit room also has a plank you can hit to create your own ripples!



The way led to the "Room for one colour', where the light plays with our eyes to make you look bluish to each other! It's one of the things where you have to be there. It might be mildly disturbing if you stayed in that room for too long!



His Infinite Mirrors installations were cool too, with people seriously lining up to have a look! He lined the walls of a miniroom with mirrors and when you look into it from a window, you find yourself infinite times in the 6 directions. It was almost like sitting in a saloon in Nellore, only a lot more artistic :)

I was getting worried by this time because we hadn't found the 360 degree room yet. This was the entry they had all over the sfmoma banners in downtown SFO. It was the last thing we saw and it was very cool as I expected it to be.



There were some other entries too. Most of his work cannot be photographed and photography was prohibited anyway.

Modern art is usually boring, (just look at the other floors of the museum!) and we are mostly right when we ask 'Are you kidding?'. The rest of the museum was the kind where you had to struggle to find the 'art'. This guy was pretty normal compared to the others! He had some 'art' too but many of the entries were cool and amusing, even to us who use the word 'art' derogatively! I hope more artists did enjoyable work instead of this and this.
- posted by V G @ 12:34 PM