2023-05-29 23:25:55
The Bilbao City Council has announced that works will begin on Wednesday, in the section between Plaza San José and the Guggenheim, to accommodate the installation of a permanent artistic project by Olafur Eliasson, which will illuminate Iparragirre street.
It will consist of seven unique lighting elements created by the Nordic artist for this space in the city. The civil works and the placement of the installation components will take four months.
According to a note from the City Council, the council and the Guggenheim signed a collaboration agreement in August 2020 under which both entities “committed to continue strengthening their alliance in the development and improvement of the city, and especially in the presence and visibility of art in its public space”.
The agreement had not been announced until now and the City Council, which has made it public, has not given more information about it or about the Eliasson facility. In August 2020, the artist exhibited at the museum, under the title ‘In real life’, around thirty works including photographs, sculptures, watercolors and installations.
Light has always been one of Eliasson’s favorite materials, since the beginning of his career. In fact, the first work that appeared chronologically in the exhibition, from 1991, consisted of a spotlight attached to the ceiling that projected a circle of light. He installed it for the first time in the cafeteria where he worked as a waiter. Patrons would get under him, watch his shadow, and move to watch his silhouette move.
Perception
In another of the installations, ‘Your uncertain shadow’ (2010), some colored lights placed in boxes resting on the floor generated the profiles of the visitors on the wall of the room. «You become aware of how others see us and how we see ourselves. The colored shades tell you that we are a different group. People do stupid things and gestures so that they are reflected on the walls. At first it was not clear to me, but then I realized that such nonsense is very important and liberating. We think that public space is free, but if you do the same thing in it, the police may come and ask you what you are doing, while not here,” explained the creator at the presentation of the exhibition at the Guggenheim.
Eliasson was born in Copenhagen in 1967 and spent much of his childhood and adolescence in Iceland. He studied at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen and lives between this city and Berlin, where he has a workshop where he creates his works in collaboration with architects, engineers and assistants.
One of his best-known works, the springboard of his career in terms of popularity, was ‘The Weather Project’, in the Turbine Room of the Tate Modern in London. He placed in 2003 a huge sun wrapped in a fine mist made of sugar and water. He was referring to the universal habit of talking about the weather, at home, in the elevator and also in the museum.
Earlier, in ‘Room For One Colour’ (1998), a corridor lit by yellow mono-frequency tubes led to a room full of light that affected the assimilation of all other colours. Perception and its dependence on lighting factors in space underpin a large part of the artist’s work, along with his concern for climate change.
One of his latest exhibitions has been held at Palazzo Strozzi, in Florence. In it he established a dialogue with the historical elements of the building, a work commissioned in the 14th century by Filippo Strozzi.
His work shows a link with the culture of the Renaissance, in which the sciences and the arts were in constant collaboration.
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