Something Like a Phenomenon

He can make a rainbow: Olafur Eliasson comes to SFMOMA.

At first blush, Olafur Eliasson could come off as an artist with a God complex. Having made a name for himself with such ambitious projects as Green River (a guerrilla-art “intervention” in which he dyed a river in Stockholm green), The Weather Project (a majestic replica of a fog-shrouded sun temporarily housed in the cavernous hall of London’s Tate Modern) and the smaller-scale-but-no-less-phenomena-replicating Beauty (a gallery installation featuring a man-made rainbow), the Icelandic art star is, quite literally, a force of nature. But anyone familiar with Eliasson’s work—a retrospective of which opens this month at SFMOMA—will quickly dismiss any charges of megalomania. Eliasson is far more concerned with empowering his viewer than wielding his own clout. You could even say, as he often does, that his work depends on it.

“Take Your Time: Olafur Eliasson” will mark the first US survey of Eliasson’s work, though SF’s New Langton Arts was one of the earliest venues to recognize the artist (including him in a group show in the mid-’90s). “The title of the show is suggesting that the spectator take responsibility—take the time that you need and find what you want,” says Eliasson, who splits his own time between Copenhagen and Berlin. “It’s also saying, ‘Don’t hurry.’ Because going through an exhibition is not like going through a shopping mall—it’s not like Disneyland.”

Although the galleries won’t, it’s true, be equipped with a set of spinning teapots for the occasion, Eliasson’s art is itself permeated by fantasy and discovery. Visitors will encounter an array of works dating from 1993 to the present, including The Waterfall Series (50 chromogenic prints shot using color filters), Multiple Grotto (a walk-in freestanding metallic sculpture whose interior resembles a kaleidoscope) and a new stainless-steel piece, One-Way Colour Tunnel, to be installed on the museum’s sky bridge.Complementing the exhibition, Your Mobile Expectations: BMW H2R Project (in which the artist makes a visual comment on global warming by encasing BMW’s hydrogen-powered race car in a room-sized freezer and outfitting it with a skin of steel mesh, mirror-coated stainless steel and layers of ice) will also be on view.

Those hoping for some sort of Green Bay developments should temper their expectations, however. “The meaning of public guerrilla actions has changed. The world has changed,” the artist says. “Considering the global state of drama with wars and terror, I became a little more hesitant.” But one senses a quiet hopefulness from the artist that this won’t always be the case. When asked what potential “interventions” he’s shelved, he refuses to divulge the details: “It’s too sad to say, ‘If there was no war, I would be doing this or that,’” he says, before adding he hasn’t given up on executing such projects down the line. He knows better than anyone, after all, that in art as well as in life, timing is everything.

"Take Your Time: Olafur Eliasson" at the SFMOMA, Sept. 8-Feb. 24, 2008.

OTHER OPENINGS
The Gao Brothers at the Limn Gallery, Sept. 7-Oct. 27.
Kate Eric at the Frey Norris Gallery, Sept. 6-Oct. 18.
Misako Inaoka at the Stephen Wirtz Gallery, Sept. 5-29.
"Marie Antoinette and the Petit Trianon at Versailles" at the Legion of Honor, Nov. 18-Feb 18.
Hung Liu's "Eight  Women Plunge into the River" at Rena Bransten Gallery, Oct. 18-Nov. 24.

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