Olafur Eliasson. Symbiotic Seeing Catalog Kunsthaus Zürich

Following the spectacular exhibition of his work in London, Olafur Eliasson (*1967) will be presenting at the beginning of 2020 an entirely new installation specifically developed for Kunsthaus Zürich. It is precisely these works by the Danish-Icelandic artist that attract viewers as if by magic. Olafur Eliasson points out that his core interest is the experience of the physical encounter with the work itself. For years, Olafur Eliasson has been one of the most important contemporary artists addressing early on the theme of sustainability and now appeals to a large number of viewers with his themes on ecological issues. The book and exhibition revolve around our relationship with other species and life forms on Earth. Olafur Eliasson's advocacy of a worldview of coexistence and collaboration becomes ever more apparent when he transforms the museum space into an immersive installation engaging our senses. We are reminded of scientific arrangements that explore physical natural phenomena such as light, water, movement, and reflection, without remaining in the abstract or formal framework of purely scientific experiments. The immediate experiential space that the artist creates prevents this, while generating an enduring resonating space on themes such as climate change, migration, and the exploitation of our planet's resources. Olafur Eliasson succeeds in translating these essential questions and social concerns into a formal language that not only appeals to the viewers' intellect, but also touches and moves them emotionally. The book accompanies the show at Kunsthaus Zürich, January 16 – March, 22, 2020. 

The Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson, b. 1967, whose studio is based in Berlin, is known worldwide for his large-scale installations employing elemental materials such as light, water, and air temperature to enhance the viewer’s experience. With his man-made work The New York City Waterfalls he created in 2008, commissioned by The Public Art Fund, one of the most exciting art events ever in public. But he could also outdo this as he showed at Tate Modern with The Weather Project, a sun installation which filled the huge open public space of the Turbine Hall. The MoCA Los Angeles and the Guggenheim New York held his works in their collections. Donna j. Haraway is an American Professor Emerita in the History of Consciousness Department and Feminist Studies Department at the University of California. Her work critizes anthropocentrism, emphasizes the self-organizig powers of nonhuman processes, and explores dissonant realtions between those processes and cultural prctices. In 1985 she published A Cyborg Manifesto in Socialist Review, which get really infulential. Josefine Klougart is a Danish novelist. She has published novels and in 2010 founded, together with Otto Jorgensen and Jakob Sandvad, the activist publishing house Forlaget Gladiator. In 2014 she received the Danish Royal Prize for Culture. She is now part of the Gladiator management team and is a teacher at the writers school. Bruno Latour is a French philosopher, anthropologist and sociologist who had several professorships, his monographs earned him a 10th place among most-cited book authors in the humanities and social sciences, since 2012 he is member of the Légion d’Honneur. Lynn Margulls was an American evolutionary theorist. Timothy Morton is a professor at Rita Shea Guffey Chair in English at Rice University and a member of object-oriented philosophy movement. His work explores the intersection of object-oriented thought and ecological studies. He has also written extensively about the literature of Mary Shelley and Romanticism.