The Geffen Contemporary MOCA, Los Angeles

by Cornelia Feye

November 3, 2024

What is real? What is a lie? What is illusion? What is reality? According to Olafur Eliasson it is relative.

Olafur Eliasson is one of the most prolific and internationally acclaimed artists of the 21^st century, with current exhibitions in New York, Istanbul, and Los Angeles simultaneously. He designed the landmark Weather project at the Tate Modern Turbine Hall in 2003, where he installed a semi-circle of lights next to mirrors covering the entire ceiling, thereby creating an artificial sun, much appreciated by the Londoner visitors in the cold weather. He also installed four artificial waterfalls between 90 and 120 ft tall in New York in 2008. He likes to work with the elements—and he thinks big!

I shouldn’t say “he created” these massive installations alone, because there is a whole team behind him with 110 engineers, designers, fabricators and craftspeople and specialized technicians, architects, archivists and art historians, web and graphic designers, film-makers, cooks, and administrators. The Olafur Eliasson Studio in Berlin also has a technically advanced and very professional website with an extensive press section, where I found images about the exhibition OPEN at the Geffen Center, including an artist statement. He writes about the site-specific installations:

“Each artwork opens up new ways of perceiving the world; each makes space for multiple stories, chapters in a broader narrative that depends on what you bring to it. The artworks are open.”

In other words, the viewer completes the artwork.

That I can do. I can share my observations and experiences in the exhibition. It is not the kind of show you walk in and write an objective description. Instead, it counts on you, me, the visitor, to interact one-on-one with each installation. Every interface is unique, depending on who we are, what the weather is like, what is our mood, are we anxious, preoccupied, or are we present and OPEN. 

The exhibition title grew of out several questions Eliasson asked himself:

AM I OPEN

To facing my numbness?

To receiving a No?

To explore where I place my attention?

To wonder?

To vulnerability?

I asked myself some of the same questions. Can I be vulnerable enough to share my personal experiences? Not something an art writer is supposed to do. I decided to share with you my interactions with the installations and invite you to have your own encounters in this amazing space, a playground for the mind and the senses.

Entering the exhibit I found myself in a darkened room with four structures that looked like watchtowers. I ducked into one and it turned out to be a walk-in kaleidoscope. Unlike a watchtower you don’t watch the surrounding— you watch what’s inside. My first impression in the mirrored space was awe, looking at the multi-facetted mirrors above, I saw slowly morphing shapes transform into star formations. Immersed in the fractured innards of a moving kaleidoscope, felt like being inside a living being, observing the process of a metabolism in real time. A seemingly cosmic dark background dotted with starlight gave way to colors, refracted in the six-sided structures, in a slow-moving mesmerizing flow of liquid and light. The story I brought with me was about floating through space past cosmic bodies, but then I got so caught up in just watching the images slowly emerge and recede that I forgot all about my story.

Eliasson’s art is not an escapist fantasy. In his statement, he says;

“When I step into OPEN, I do not leave my everyday life and enter a world that is separate or less real than the world outside. My exhibition at the Geffen Contemporary at MOCA is an extension of that world. The artworks draw you in and direct your gaze outwards. They open the museum to the outside, transforming it into a giant viewing device through which you see your surroundings anew, here and now. “

What I was seeing inside these kaleidoscopes, was not a computer-generated vision, it was the actual sky above Los Angeles, filtered light and liquid on an overcast day.

AM I OPEN

To fierce tenderness?

To asking “why” instead of “how”?

To sharing? (our planet)

To Slowness? Eliasson asks.

I asked myself about slowness. Can I slow down enough to perceive subtle conversions? Several of the installations, including the kaleidoscope for uncertainty and surprises, which looks like an inverted telescope shaft, changes very slowly. When I looked into the wide end, I saw slightly fluctuating color triangles in a kaleidoscope arrangement. The shifting hues of pinks, greens and blues were barely noticeable, unless I managed stillness and patience. As a reward I noticed the slow transformation. The work wanted to be discovered, it didn’t just offer itself to the viewer; it required a bit of effort on my part, even if the effort consisted of letting go and slowing down, not expecting immediate results and sensations.

Slowness and patience was also required and rewarded in interacting with the Pluriverse Assembly, from 2021. Entering another dark room in the maze of the exhibition, I encountered a large, wall-size screen displaying a slow-motion film of otherworldly spaces, complete with spectral rainbows, and alien planetary objects sliding across the screen, casting shadows or intersecting orbs of light. I sat mesmerized, following the unfolding cosmic spectacle at the pace of water dripping from a distance, unhurried as a sunset or clouds drifting across the sky. It took a while to sink in that this was no movie. The shapes did not repeat, they continued to unfold in almost imperceptible variations.  This was in fact a live show, happening in real time for the first and last time in this exact sequence. No one else would see the identical arrangement. There was no projector and the only explanation was to be found behind the screen. I walked around and found an assortment of lenses, optical components, glass, wood, prisms, paraffin oil and various other implements being lit up by LED light and projected onto the screen as they turned and swayed and moved ever so slightly behind the curtain.

I could have sat in front of this magic theatre for hours, but there was more to explore.

On the second floor I entered a space dominated by several 7.5 meter metal rings surrounded by mirrors. How were these heavy metal rings suspended in space? I couldn’t find any string or line to hold them and I couldn’t pinpoint my location within these floating rings.  It took me a while to discover that Eliasson had used another device to confuse my sense of space. The rings were really just halves attached discreetly to the mirrors, creating whole rings only in my perception. The space itself occupied just a fraction of the large interior I saw. Again, Eliasson allowed me to examine the heavy anchors holding the cantilevered half-rings in place on the back side of the mirrors. I understood why he needs engineers on his staff.

Art in the 21^st century is no longer a confrontation between a viewer and a work of art with clear demarcation lines between them. The artwork does not remain at a safe distance from the viewer any more, it invades our space and we are invited to interact. There is no more line drawn on the floor or a rope at five feet in front of the art work, which cannot be breached without setting off an unpleasant sound ringing through the whole museum, followed by an armed guard. In much of the art of previous centuries a mental distance from the artwork had to be maintained, to avoid projecting our own feelings into the artwork. Instead, we were supposed to deduce the meaning the artist has intended. My art history professor at university sternly admonished us young art history students, never to get involved emotionally with art.

21^st century artists like Olafur Eliasson want the viewer to become a co-creator, and enter into an open-minded encounter with the art, a merging of minds and matter to create a new reality happening in the interface. He considered artworks to be only complete once they encounter the audience, whom he sees as responsible for co-producing the art. The artworks in turn host the viewers and their experiences.

This was my story interacting with the exhibit OPEN. I experienced wonder, awe, confusion, impatience, slowness, flow, and definitely a different perspective to look at the world.  As Eliasson says: Reality is relative—depending on what you bring to it. I hope you will create your own encounters with this astounding exhibition.

Olafur Eliasson: OPEN, The Geffen Contemporary MOCA, Los Angeles, 2024 Photo: Zak Kelley Courtesy of the artist; Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York / Los Angeles; neugerriemschneider, Berlin © 2024 Olafur Eliasson

Geffen Contemporary at MOCA, 152 North Central Ave. Los Angeles, CA 90012

Until July 6, 2025, Opening hours: Thur, Fri, 11-5, Sat, Sun, 11-6