Los Angeles
The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA
Attentive art students never forget the first time they focused so intensely on a still-life that when they left the studio and went outside, their powers of observation remained heightened. Looking around, they could see precisely how to capture the dusk-defined edge of a building or the negative space between tree branches—structure, anatomy, and action illuminated. Icelandic-Danish artist Olafur Eliasson aims to produce that experience on a grander scale by awakening viewers’ observational capacity and channeling it, hoping his experiments in perception will unlock curiosity about the universe and foster investment in the fate of our planet. In “OPEN,” he encouraged careful looking as a means to “sense our way into” larger systems. That he mostly missed these goals didn’t dampen the possibility for enjoyment of his often spectacular installations, or his commendable ambition.
Part of “PST ART: Art & Science Collide,” a blanket of Southern California exhibitions incentivized by the Getty, “OPEN” also fell under MOCA’s environmental initiative, which makes sense based on Eliasson’s past work. In 2012, he designed Little Sun, a solar-powered light sold in communities with electricity and given away in communities without it. For Ice Watch (2014–18), he placed large blocks of melting ice in public squares, like numbers on clock faces, to make clear that time is running out in the fight to mitigate climate change.
The works in “OPEN,” however, were much less direct than those earlier projects, and the climate crisis often became a foggy backstory. Weather-drawing observatory for the future (2024), for instance, employed a neat record-player-like device to pump out a drawing a day. The machine varied its mark-making slightly based on outdoor light conditions (sunny or cloudy) and differences across current, past, and anticipated temperatures. Viewing machine for imagining oceanic futures (2024), one of six large-scale kaleidoscopes included in the show, simulated a pleasant underwater experience, but it could also have referred indirectly to a near future when continually melting glaciers and ice sheets will cover more of the planet in water.
Your sunset shadow (2024), which functioned by shining spotlights on a wall, took the frothy, science-lite approach of a children’s museum display. When someone moved through the light, partially blocking it, their shadow was split up, theatrically multiplied and expanded like a fanned-out hand of cards. Perhaps Eliasson wants us to consider how much impact we can have. Could seeing our shadow enlivened lead us to wonder how we could re-energize our lives or have more impact than we previously thought possible?
The listening dimension (2017), an exceedingly elegant installation, resembled a dance studio equipped with hovering metal rings. In a relatively obvious perceptual trick, the rings were half metal and half reflection, the metal held up by an apparatus viewable behind the mirrors. When Eliasson exhibited this work at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery in New York after the divisive 2016 U.S. presidential election, he attempted a high-minded and optimistic contextualization. At that time, he wanted to register his opposition to “simplistic, polarizing, populist ideas” and to align himself with art that is “an exercise in democracy,” capable of improving “our critical capacities for perceiving and interpreting the world.” In this light, the rings in The listening dimension could represent the great effort and attention it takes to form anything approaching a unified public, or even the illusion of one. On the other hand, they could just be an entertaining mirage.
Ultimately, “OPEN” felt like a happy face stuck on devastation and loss, and the artist’s explanations don’t suffice. If Eliasson wanted us to get somewhere, he could give us more to propel us forward. If only we could walk away from one of his exhibitions (or any exhibition) clear-eyed and purposeful, with an authentic and improved understanding of how the world works, our place in it, and how we can live responsibly. That’s a tall order, and it may be asking too much of art, but it would be wonderful.
