Olafur Eliasson - Contemporary Art Evening Sale London Friday, October 17, 2008 | Phillips

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  • Provenance

    Galleria Emi Fontana, Milan

  • Exhibited

    Pasadena, Emi Fontana West of Rome, Jamie Residence, Meant to be Lived In (Today I'm feeling prismatic). 21 April - 31 May, 2005

  • Literature

    M. Duncan, "Olafur Eliasson at the Jamie Residence" in Art in America, December, 2005; O. Eliasson, Studio Olafur Eliasson: An Encyclopedia, Cologne, 2008, p. 272 (illustrated) 

  • Catalogue Essay

    Olafur Eliasson, although somewhat newly anointed, has become synonymous for his impeccable, seemingly magical, interventions of elephantine arenas through an articulation of elemental forces, technology and atmosphere. Eliasson uses the ephemeral and intangible in a manner that encompasses his viewers within the work, forcing them to reconsider their previously conceived notions of how they interact with their surroundings. It is typical of Eliasson’s work to take place within the urban landscape, but it is with our present lot, To Day, that the artist re-invites us back into the domestic. To Day was originally conceived for a project titled “Meant To Be Lived In (Today I am Feeling Prismatic)”, taking place in 2005, where Eliasson transformed the modernist Pasadena Hills Jamie Residence, into a stunning challenge for the senses.

     “I wanted a different engagement in domestic space,” he said, “moving from a more institutionalized way of seeing . . . into the domestic sphere. I want you to be in a place that you know is a home, and I want for you to question how much time is appropriate to spend there, to spend on each individual work. This space is small, dark, private. . . . I wanted it to be outside the megalomaniacal project of my recent work.”(Olafur Eliasson quoted by Matthew Wilder, LA Residential, Art Forum website Los Angeles 04.25.05)

    A rotating disk consisting of four concentric glass prisms hangs from the ceiling. A spotlight with a beam exactly the size of the disc is finalized upon it. The light is refracted through each of the prisms and projected as four rainbows as well as four white rings onto the walls. For every rotation of the disc, the projected rings pass a full 360 degrees around the space. To Day is a rare invitation to the viewer by the artist to strip themselves of everything that they know and inter into a universe of bewilderment and freedom, the works use of almost nothing to entirely fill a space and saturate it with a beauty so simple that the viewer is removed of all ideas of what they thought a space could do.

309

To Day

2005
Acrylic glass, motor, mirror, HMI Lamp, screen.
Installation dimensions variable.
A rotating disc consisting of four concentric glass prisms hanging from the ceiling. A spotlight with a beam exactly the size of the discs focused upon it. The light is refracted through each of the prisms and projected as four rainbows as well as four white rings onto the walls. For every rotation of the disc, the projected rings pass a full 360 degrees around the space.

Estimate
£80,000 - 120,000 ‡♠

Sold for £109,250

Contemporary Art Evening Sale

18 Oct 2008, 7pm
London