Our Space to Help

Together with Berlin's cultural institutions, we are calling for a fundraiser to help people who have fled Ukraine and are arriving in Berlin. We invite you to come to the Neue Nationalgalerie to donate and be together from Saturday, 5 March at 10:00 through Sunday, 6 March at midnight at Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin.

The fundraising campaign is organised in cooperation with Be an Angel e.V.
Please be welcome to donate on site:
• power banks / batteries for smartphones
• mobile WIFI hotspots
• monetary donations

The staff from Be an Angel e.V. will also provide information about further aid measures on site.

An ‘open microphone’ on site invites you to share your own thoughts, music, poetry, and literature. Your spontaneous contributions will be welcome.

Initiated by Klaus Biesenbach and developed in close collaboration with Anne Imhof and Olafur Eliasson, together with a large group of colleagues and volunteers from the Neue Nationalgalerie and Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz, this is as an open invitation to all Berlin art institutions, artists, and residents.

Be an Angel e.V.
https://beanangel.direct
Donation code: #kunst4ukraine
Account 014 522 59 00 Sort code 100 708 48 (Deutsche Bank)
IBAN DE37100708480145225900 BIC DEUTDEDB110

Adrift compass, 2019 - Studio Olafur Eliasson, Berlin  – 2019 - Photo: Jens Ziehe

We’ve updated our resource page 'Support humanitarian aid in Ukraine’ with even more links. It now includes organisations and platforms supporting, hosting, and arranging housing for refugees who are already arriving in Berlin from Ukraine. Find it all here:
Support humanitarian aid in Ukraine

Some of these organisations are driving donations and supplies to the border of Ukraine themselves. Also, some of these local resources are available in Ukrainian and Russian languages in addition to English and German.

Image used on Blog post '1986' (from S3)

Colour experiment no. 108’, 2020. Photo: Jens Ziehe

Colour experiment no. 108, 2020 - Studio Olafur Eliasson, Berlin – 2021 - Photo: Jens Ziehe

Detail of ‘Colour experiment no. 108’, 2020. Now on view at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, Los Angeles, as part of the solo exhibition ‘Your light spectrum and presence’. Photo: Jens Ziehe

In 2009, Olafur Eliasson began a series of circular paintings inspired by the idea of producing a new, comprehensive colour theory that would comprise all the visible colours of the prism. He began by working with a colour chemist to mix in paint an exact tone for each nanometre of light in the spectrum, which ranges in frequency from approximately 390 to 700 nanometres. Since those initial experiments, Eliasson has branched out to make a large number of painted works on circular canvases, known collectively as the colour experiments. A number of these works take their palettes from other sources, from historical paintings by J. M. W. Turner or Caspar David Friedrich, for example. In the case of ‘Colour experiment no. 108’, the muted tones in the background were derived from the colours found in a photograph taken by the artist in Iceland in 2012. A formless multicolored explosion spreads out from the centre of the canvas, contrasting starkly with the smooth, even background.

The missing left brain, 2022 - Galería Elvira González – 2022 - Photo: CENIZA

'The missing left brain', 2022. Now on view as part of Olafur Eliasson's solo exhibition 'Navegación situada' at Galería Elvira González, Madrid. Photo: CENIZA

'The missing left brain', 2022, unfurls before the viewer as a constantly changing lightshow of shapes, colours, and shadows, created through the reflection and refraction of light. The symmetrical sequence develops and vanishes in a slow continuum upon a circular screen that seems to hover in the space. The screen is in fact a semicircular screen affixed to a mirror, which creates the illusion of a full circle and doubles the amorphous shapes into a symmetrical Rorschach-like light display.

Viewers can glimpse the apparatus responsible for producing the projection inside a custom-made box mounted behind the screen. The box contains disparate glass lenses, colour-effect filters, and objects from Eliasson’s studio. A light inside the box illuminates the objects as they turn, and the resulting distortions are projected via a lens onto the screen. As each motor revolves at its own pace, the relationship between the various elements constantly changes, so that the light sequence appears always new. Chance alignments produce an ever-changing symphony of shadows and reflections on the screen – a phantasmagoria of evolving shapes, arboreal shadows, spectral arcs, and fields of colour that wax and wane and ooze across the surface of the screen.

Colour experiment no. 94, 2020 - Studio Olafur Eliasson, Berlin – 2022 - Photo: Jens Ziehe

'Colour experiment no. 94', 2020. Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, Los Angeles. Photo: Jens Ziehe

Several paintings in Olafur Eliasson's solo exhibition 'Your light spectrum and presence' – currently on view at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery in Los Angeles – feature the bright spectrum of colour seen in the natural phenomenon of a rainbow, a recurring motif throughout Eliasson’s practice.

‘In the hurly-burly of everyday existence, the generosity of the rainbow lies in its unexpected appearance. It is a small miracle when the position of the sun, adequate weather conditions, and your eyes – otherwise focused on your busy life – align to create a rainbow. This may allow you to pause to celebrate the fleeting moment of trajectories meeting up. It is like nature offering a surprise party, while allowing us the pleasure of being a co-host.’ – Olafur Eliasson

Installation view: Your light spectrum and presence, 2022 - Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, Los Angeles – 2022 - Photo: Jeff White

‘Your light spectrum and presence’, a solo exhibition by Olafur Eliasson, now on view at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, Los Angeles. Photo: Jeff White

Olafur Eliasson - Navegación situada

https://vimeo.com/670635416

Olafur Eliasson's latest solo exhibition ‘Navegación situada’, now on view at Galería Elvira González in Madrid.

Now open at Galería Elvira González in Madrid, Olafur Eliasson's solo exhibition 'Navegación situada' explores how we navigate today's complex world through a series of works that delve into our sense of presence and invite the viewer to contemplate unexpected and open terrain.

On view through 2 April, the exhibition features a series of watercolours, hanging compasses, a large projection work, and a wall-based work of glass and driftwood.

Image used on Blog post '1975' (from S3)

The missing left brain’, 2022. On view now at Galería Elvira González in Madrid as part of Olafur’s latest solo exhibition ‘Navegación situada’.

‘In “Navegación situada”, I hope to place our sense of place and of being present under loving scrutiny. Walter D. Mignolo, an Argentinian literary theorist and specialist on decolonial theory, rephrased the Cartesian “I think therefore I am as I am where I do and think.” This is such a radical shift from what I have been brought up on. Thinking, doing, and place are fundamentally entangled. Being conscious of where I am is the first step to knowing who I am and to addressing fundamental questions of existence. But knowledge can only ever partial. The feminist and biologist Donna Haraway, whose work I admire, talks about “situated knowledges”: knowledges – in the plural – that are embodied and arise through your entanglement with a particular site, in a particular culture, and at a particular time. This is something I’ve only recently begun to recognise properly although I’ve long worked with the idea that “vision”, for instance, is embodied and particular, and that our entire sensorium facilitates how we connect with our specific surroundings and what we experience as our surroundings.’ – Olafur Eliasson on his exhibition ‘Navegación situada’ at Galería Elvira González, Madrid

Image used on Blog post '1973' (from S3)

'Compass travellers (north)', 2022. Part of Olafur Eliasson's latest solo exhibition 'Navegación situada' at Galería Elvira González in Madrid, opening 20 January.

The round corner, 2018 - Photo: Jens Ziehe, 2018

‘The round corner’, 2018. Photo: Jens Ziehe

Your watercolour machine, 2009

'Your watercolour machine’, 2009

Your natural denudation inverted, 1999 - Carnegie International 1999/2000, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, 1999 - Photo: Olafur Eliasson

‘Your natural denudation inverted’, 1999. At the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, USA, a shallow pond was constructed around the trees in the courtyard. A plume of steam, channeled directly from the museum's heating system located in the adjacent building, was continuously emitted from the center of the pond.

Spatial orbit, 2021 - Studio Olafur Eliasson, Berlin – 2021 - Photo: Jens Ziehe

‘Spatial orbit’, 2021. Photo: Jens Ziehe

Your invisible house, 2005 - Private collection, Denmark, 2007 – 2005 - Photo: Jakob Hunosøe

‘Your invisible house’, 2005

‘The everyday life of the unforeseen’, 2021

‘The everyday life of the unforeseen’, 2021

Not-yet-conceived flare from a nearby, more-than-human future, 2021 - Studio Olafur Eliasson, Berlin – 2021 - Photo: Jens Ziehe

‘Not-yet-conceived flare from a nearby, more-than-human future’, 2021. Photo credit: Jens Ziehe

Olafur Eliasson and Kumi Naidoo - On Art and Activism

Olafur Eliasson and Kumi Naidoo – On Art and Activism

On the occasion of COP 26 in Glasgow, Olafur Eliasson and Kumi Naidoo discuss if art and activism can learn from each other.

Kumi Naidoo is an activist and former Secretary-General of Amnesty International and former Executive Director of Greenpeace. He is currently a Bosch Academy Fellow and a Global Ambassador for Africans Rising for Justice, Peace and Dignity.

COP 26 in Glasgow is a definitive moment for heads of state, global leaders, and their teams to make binding decisions to significantly slow down the effects of climate change. Our actions today will shape the course of the next decade and beyond. It is an important opportunity to ask ourselves and one another: how can we work collaboratively across disciplines and geographic, cultural, and national borders, and in a manner that takes into account the needs of multiple generations and of all species, in order to navigate towards a safe and more just future? The climate crisis is a collective action problem – there is no one way to tackle this.

Together they discuss, in the face of the climate crisis, how can the work of artists help create change? And what can activism achieve – can it be done differently?

Image used on Blog post '1962' (from S3)

People in the crowd illuminate Little Sun torches during the Pathway to Paris event at the Theatre Royal during COP26, this year's UN climate change conference, in Glasgow. Photo: Roberto Ricciuti/Redferns

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