About the Work
This is a journey into the bowels of mountains. Just as capsule endoscopy can send 50,000 photos to the radiology department within eight hours as the probe winds its way through the human body, so the Danish installation artist has photographed the arteries in the rocks of Iceland's caves. Olafur Eliasson entered 'The Inner Cave' at the place where he had spent his childhood. He used a rod lens to depict the arteries in the volcanic folds of the rock. Captivated by what he saw of the exposed Earth and its light explosions of fire and water, he soon began to convert these natural wonders into technoid art spaces. He has fed the physical and chemical sensations of such phenomena into the organism of contemporary architecture. In doing so, he also caters to the sensuous perceptivity of those of his contemporaries who live far removed from nature. Eliasson has formed steel constructions into grottoes; designed a scent tunnel for the EXPO 2000 in Hannover; made waterfalls grow out of the Hudson River; and has whipped light through dark spaces like dancing flashes of lightning. With its glass façade and colours of a steel rainbow, the Concert Hall and Conference Centre he designed for Reykjavik has been magically attracting visitors to the city since the summer of 2011.
