Olafur Eliasson: Your Chance Encounter

The acclaimed Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson developed a sequence of spatial experiments for his Your Chance Encounter exhibition in the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, Japan. His piece challenges visitors to move around and get their bearings, and stimulates them to see the museum as a public space for addressing art and reality critically. The installations were developed especially for the exhibition. They are arranged in a tight context with the spatial structure of the museum and extend the concept of architecture by the Japanese architecture practice SANAA. Olafur Eliasson does not work only in the museum galleries, but also in the corridors in between and the adjacent courtyards, thus linking the indoor and outdoor areas closely and examining this museum’s unique qualities. The artist’s book was created in close co-operation with Olafur Eliasson’s studio. Its elaborate design with an extensive pictorial section offers a comprehensive record of the exhibition and an important analysis of this successful artist’s work. An essay by art historian Eve Blau interprets the exhibition in relation to its surroundings and contrasts the experimental approaches of Olafur Eliasson and SANAA, while curator Hiromi Kurosawa introduces the history and context of the museum in Kanazawa.