Olafur Eliasson: Your psychoacoustic light ensemble: October 24 – December 19, 2024

Tanya Bonakdar Gallery is very pleased to present a solo exhibition of new work by Icelandic-Danish artist Olafur Eliasson, on view in New York from October 24 to December 19, 2024. The exhibition will comprise two new light installations, one of which includes sound; a series of recent watercolors; and two new sculptural works. All of the works draw on Eliasson’s interest in the relativity of our perception and exploring how our experiences of the world are created.

The installation on the ground floor translates audio waves into visual phenomena. Exploring the peripheries of our perception, Eliasson employs low-frequency vibrations to create a spatial soundscape that is felt and seen, as well as heard. On the wall of a darkened room, circles of light fade in and out in reaction to a composition of sounds, while ripples of light crisscross the glowing discs. These projection works are the result of unassuming apparatuses that, as is often the case in Eliasson’s works, are left visible to the viewers. The fleeting patterns of light that dance across the projections react to the changing wavelengths of the soundwaves. Through the projected circles, the sound becomes visible, inviting viewers to see sound and hear the light—to "see" themselves hearing.

At the entry of the exhibition space hangs the glowing form of Fierce tenderness sphere. Two frames trace the geodesic lines of a sphere in opposite directions, with innumerable triangles of colored glass and color-effect filter glass affixed in pairs. These curving lines naturally draw the eye upward in a whirlwind of color and form, and even the slightest movement by the viewer alters the perceived alignment of spirals and triangles, conjuring an illusion of constant change.

The works on the second floor continue Eliasson’s investigation of color phenomena, a central concern for much of his work across all media, from large-scale installations to photographs, sculptures, and light projections. The artist is fascinated by the relativity of color perception, by the fact that how we see colors is extremely individual and dependent upon context. “Color,” he writes, “does not exist in itself but only when looked at. The unique fact that color only materializes when light bounces off a surface onto our retinas shows us that the analysis of colors is, in fact, about the ability to analyze ourselves.”

In the main sky lit gallery, the artist presents large watercolor works that conjure the evanescent luminosity of a rainbow on paper. The illusion of light, long a desiderata of painters in Western art history, is here the result of applying thin, translucent layers of pigment in succession, with a precision of execution that creates a completely seamless transition through the color spectrum. The pristine, vaporous rainbow seems to emanate from the paper, the large scale enveloping the viewer in color.