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b. 1967, Copenhagen
Olafur Eliasson was born in Copenhagen on February 15, 1967. He studied at the Kongelige Danske Kunstakademi in Copenhagen from 1989 to 1995. One of his earliest projects, which presaged later concerns in his work, consisted of a projection of a window onto the wall of his studio at school so that it seemed that late-afternoon sun was illuminating the normally sunless room. He has since continued to investigate the connections between nature and culture, the real and the artificial, and cerebral and bodily experience. In Beauty (1994), he created a rainbow by combining fine mist and a spotlight. The Very Large Ice Floor (1998) turned part of the Museum Fridericianum in Kassel into an ice rink. In the Green River Project (1998–99), he dyed the water of streams in Stockholm, Tokyo, and Johannesburg with a nontoxic substance used by scientists to track the flow of water. At the 2003 Venice Biennale, he turned the Danish Pavilion into The Blind Pavilion, a four-story structure filled with and structured by dazzling handmade optical devices. In The Mediated Motion (2001), he transformed the different floors of the Kunsthaus Bregenz in Bregenz, Austria, into a series of “natural” environments—complete with ponds, earth, and fog—for viewers to traverse. For many projects, the artist works collaboratively with specialists in various fields, among them the architects Einar Thorsteinn and Sebastian Behmann (both of whom have been frequent collaborators), author Svend Åge Madsen (The Blind Pavilion), and landscape architect Gunther Vogt (The Mediated Motion).
Since his first solo exhibition, at Overgarden in Copenhagen in 1991, Eliasson has shown at the Kunsthalle Basel (1997), Århus Kunstmuseum in Århus, Denmark (1998), Frankfurter Kunstverein (1999), Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston (2001), the Museum of Modern Art in New York (Projects 73, 2001), and the Tate in London (2003), among other venues. He has also appeared in numerous group exhibitions, including the Istanbul Biennial (1997), Johannesburg Biennale (1997), Biennale of Sydney (1998), Bienal de São Paulo (1998), Venice Biennale (1999 and 2001), Carnegie International (1999), International Triennale of Contemporary Art in Yokohama (2001), Bienal de Arte de Pontevedra (2002), and Sitings: Installation Art 1969–2003 at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles (2003). Eliasson lives and works in Berlin.
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