Olafur Eliasson - The Island Series

Olafur Eliasson

The Island Series
1997

Photo work in 56 parts: chromogenic prints on aluminium composite panels (reprint 2021). 245 x 368 cm (installation). Signed in felt-tip pen and typewritten work details on an accompanying artist's label. Typewritten work details on a gallery label, affixed to the reverse of each frame. With accompanying hanging instructions. Artist Proof aside from an edition of 3. - Each framed under glass (artist's frame).

„Eliasson began taking pictures in 1989, on an annual summer vacation in his native Iceland. During these trips, he would visit family and travel around the country by car or hike through it‘s highlands. By 1991-92 he realized that this casual activity of photographing while touring could evolve into something more conceptually coherent. Unlike his three-dimentional work, which is based on myriad sources and is thus more universal in character, his photographs are specifically about Iceland’s terrain, it‘s particular conditions, it‘s develpoment, and his interaction with it. ‚I am aware that Iceland is a very exotic place in many people’s minds, and I think the reason for this is that Iceland in fact is, and in particular was, very exotic. Seen from the overcultivated and overpopulated Western world, Iceland is one of the few European spots that has not yet been completely exploited and holds an extreme beauty in it‘s highlands and volcanic areas.‘ Indeed, Eliasson’s images of the country have a beauty that is often deceptive, for as we examine them more closely and in relation to one another, they speak to the same conceptual interest in temporality, perception, an spatiality that govern his sculpural practice. […]
Time, distance, the journey toward something, and the view of a location from an non-Euclidean surface all come together in „The island series“ (1997), which is the work in which Eliasson introduced the idea of shifting scale and format within the grid. The top few rows of pictures are short and wide in appearance, emphasizing our great distance from the horizon. In succeding rows, the picture are progressively taller and squarer, as the islands evolve from being flatter and lying accross the ocean to being taller and appearing to grow out of it filling the picture frame and procceding into the foreground. The bottom row of pictures, in which the islands are quite tall, bring to mind Eliasson’s recurring interest in the condition of gravity, as the large rock formations give the illusion of floating on the surface of the water.“ (quoted from: Matthew Drutt, Olafur Eliasson. A Cultivated View, in: Idem (ed.), op. cit., pp. 11/13.)

Provenance

Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York; The Margulies Collection, Miami

Literature

Matthew Drutt/Diana Murphy (eds.), Ólafur Eliasson. Photographs, Houston 2004, ill. p. 43 and ill on front cover; Anna Engberg-Pedersen (ed.), Studio Ólafur Eliasson. An Encyclopedia, Cologne 2008, ill. p. 355; Katherine Hinds (ed.), Martin Z. Margulies Collection, Vol. 2, Miami 2019, ill. pp. 204

Exhibitions

Umeå/Sweden 1998 (Bildmuseet), Ólafur Eliasson. Photographs
Cologne 1998 (Kunsthalle), MAI 98. Positionen zeitgenössischer Kunst seit den 60er Jahren
New York 1999 (Museum of Modern Art), Ólafur Eliasson. New Photography 14