Olafur Eliasson's Riverbed

Arts & Events - by Open Journal

The latest work from Danish-Icelanding artist Olafur Eliasson has opened at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark.

Entitled Riverbed, the work is a major site specific installation that the museum describes as a ‘major intervention’ in the museum’s administration of art in space.

Across the venue’s entire South Wing, Eliasson has created a living, breathing, river bed of rock and pebble, complete with water trickling through it and moss that is naturally forming. The work is an actual eco system, which Eliasson and the museum state is intended to blur the lines between inside and outside, culture and nature.

In turning an entire museum wing into a single large scale installation, the usual display of art has been inverted – walls are bare, free of art in a conventional sense. Instead, viewers are presented with an empty landscape within the confines of an indoor gallery setting. And just as in open nature, the viewer is free to move through the landscape, free from agenda and expectation.

Complementing the multi-room installation, Eliasson also has established a model room, which will be constantly updated and developed in order to create an insight into the artist’s approach and ongoing influences.