Olafur Eliasson - In Real Life: A review, theatre and storytelling

Storytelling is an art form that doesn’t stop when you leave the theatre; nor do any of
the complex forms of design, art and self experience. Wherever you are, the message
that a person wants to convey to you, can have the same, unrivalled power that a
theatre performance has. Art has the ability to impact you, make you think and consider
why it has been done, in the same way a piece of music or a play may do. (This being
a comparison I will come back to later). It is for these reasons that I have chosen to
review my experiences at Elliassons: ‘In Real Life’. His ethereal and hypnotic
installations were pieces of epic theatre in themselves. Marvels of light and illusion that
explored all the senses, took you on journeys and most importantly of all, told a
terrifying and poignant story. The state of our planet. Through this review, I will explore
my journey through his Tate Exhibition and explore these deeper metaphors and why
they had such an impact on an audience member.

Olafur Eliasson is a danish-icelandic artist who was born in 1967. He is known for
creating large scale and impactful installations and sculptures that employ elemental
materials. Primarily light, water, space and the atmosphere, alongside spatial science,
mathematics and geometry. Words that come to mind when thinking about his work
include ‘hypnotic’ and ‘epic’. Though there are many themes that Elíasson
metaphorizes through his work, ‘In Real Life’ aims to protest and speak out on the
world's current and most frightening issues; the climate crisis and sea level rise. He
challenges the way in which we see and experience the beauty of our world, playing
with how we navigate and perceive the very environment with which we placed inside.
He tells a story for people, that makes them think. Eliasson himself has said that “​art is
not the object but what the object does to the world​”.

In my opinion, ‘In Real Life’ has three central stages that make up the journey.

Nature, beauty; irony.

The first room of work that you enter as an audience member truly takes you on the
first step of the journey through Elíassons activism and genius. First you notice a wall,
coated in every direction with Reindeer Moss. It fills the air around you with sweet and
clean scents, then later combined with its organic and delicate texture. All the senses
are affected as you are transported to beautiful images of vast expansive landscapes.
It has the power to take you into a totally contrasting environment of organic majesty,
right there in the harsh confines of the gallery. Next you may notice some large acrylic
wave tanks, filled with a luminous yellow stained liquid. A hypnotic display of gentle
waves and wavelets, flowing effortlessly up and down, up and down. Occasionally one
may collide with another and a new visual dynamic is created. You are transported
again; visions of the sea. The oceans waves create ever changing landscapes;
beautiful and dark in their own ways. This installation demonstrates the sheer power of
the simplest things. You are impacted and shown nature in a way you had never
thought of. Hypnotised by the simplest mechanisms. You are shown the beauty of the
external environment, something that's there for all to see and enjoy…even look after.
Yet you still insist on becoming encapsulated by the inverted actions of the artist. The
final work of Elíasson that I shall mention in this section, is titled ‘beauty’. You enter. A
darkened chamber and are instantly drawn into a seamless cloud of water droplets,
awash with a vivid spectrum of colour, floating effortlessly in the space surrounding it.
This installation by Elíasson, I feel encapsulates perfectly what I think is the message
behind these first works in the journey. You as an audience member are drawn into a
cruel ironic trap. You come and view all these beautiful phenomena of nature, inside
the confines of a gallery. Yet you fail to see that this is the point. You should
understand that these phenomena of nature are in the world around us. A world that
we are failing to acknowledge and look after. This ironic part of Eliassons story makes
you think; a rude awakening to the majesty of the natural world. Like the first stages of
grief, you are taken from denial to acceptance.

Perception.
Throughout the next few rooms of installations, you are taken on the next part of this
beautiful, but terrifying story. After a while you reach ‘Your Blind Passenger’. Stretched
out before you is a 40 meter long tunnel, filled with an impenetrable luminescent fog.
As you walk through it, your perception and navigation is lost, you become blind. With
your arms stretched out in front you, you stumble through the infinite fog, vivid colours
shifting in every direction around you, the heat becoming suffocating. You can barely
see a few feet in front you as people disappear from your vision and you finally reach
the end. The whole experience leaves you shocked, and confused, but in awe of the
puzzling and terrifying beauty of it. A while later, you reach another room that
immediately hypnotises you. ‘Your uncertain shadow’, a room where several coloured
lights cast your shadow onto the wall. However, you are taken back and disoriented by
the vast number of shadows that you cast. Different colours, shades and sizes. You are
blinded in confusion as you attempt to keep track of every version of yourself that you
can see. The experience is truly hypnotic and as you fall into a trance, your perception
of yourself is once again challenged by Eliasson. The final work which I wish to talk
about in this section is ‘One Big Bang’. You enter a pitch black chamber, and suddenly,
a bright white light flashes for a split second and a small fountain appears. Again, it
appears for only a brief moment. You realise that every time the light flashes, this
crystal like mushroom of water changes formation, caught in a brief freeze frame of
reality. You yourself are one again disoriented by the contrasting darkness and light,
but you are drawn into this fountain wondering what will appear next. It is through these
works and many more, that Eliasson further challenges our understanding and
perception of the world around us. By messing around with our own perception,
distorting the environment we are placed in and challenging what you yourself may
think is real, you are forced to think about your perception of the real, physical world
around you. He makes us think hard about perception as a concept, and makes us
reflect on how the beauty of nature can connect to this distortion of reality. This follows
on very well from his fist stage, and this builds on that. Putting us through a further
journey of emotions, self experience and realisation.

Explanation.

Throughout this exhibition, Eliasson has taken us on a journey of emotion, self

experience and realisation. He has exposed us to the beauty of the natural world and
messed around with our perception in ways we thought not possible. He has
transported us through nature and through this, he has told a story about the world we
live in. Challenged the way we see the physical world engulfing us and highlighted
environmental issues on a massive scale. This is how we reach the last stage of ‘In
Real Life’. In the next few rooms, we are shown photos and sculptures, accounts for
other works by Eliasson, all surrounding one theme. The state of our planet. He shows
us harrowing photos of Icelandic glaciers that year after year are decreasing in size. He
shows us pictures of block ice, melting, protesting against the rate of sea level rise.
Even here we have strands of the past, one end of a massive room is shrouded in a
vast, yellow stained plastic curtain , A further emphasis on the distortion of perception
and challenging of how we see the world. A while later, you enter a room contains a
massive ring of black steel. But you realise that the ceiling is in fact a mirror and it is a
clever geometric illusion. Here Eliasson once again traps us in a cruel irony. Whilst we
are encapsulated by your own reflection, you are in fact failing to be thinking about
what is the most important thing. You are forced to think about your own image of
yourself, your narcisssm causing you to be drawn away form what matter most. It is
through all of these things that Eliasson now explains what everything means, he
highlights the central issues behind his work. Why he has distorted reality, challenged
perception and taken us on a journey through the elements.

Conclusion, interpretation, storytelling.

As part of this conclusion, I not only want to focus on Eliassons’s stunningly beautiful
use of elemental materials and space, but I also want to focus on two other things that
Eliasson has got very right with ‘In Real Life’: Interpretation and Storytelling. Firstly, I
think that with this exhibition Eliasson has told a great story, in the same way you may
see from a musician or playwright. Much like the message behind a story in the theatre,
this story tells the audience a moral message of our environment. By creating all that I
have discussed above, he has left a mark on the audience. Messing with our
perception and showing us the beauty of nature has made us really think about the
world around us, made us challenge reality and have a personal experience that will
cause action. But how does he so cleverly do this through such simplicity? To answer
that question, I have to talk about interpretation. In my view, interpretation is basically a
circular process. You start with and idea or concept, in this case Eliassons artworks.
These ideas then cause emotion in the people who are experiencing this idea, and this
idea then causes actions that feed back into the purpose behind that central idea.
However, it’s more complicated than that. Something that Eliasson has done so well in
this storytelling exhibition, is creating art and personal experiences that will all make us
feel different emotions. You could feel scared, angry or sad, but you ultimately become
aware of and act on one thing, the physical world around you. Eliasson has said
himself that art is not the object, but what the object does to the world. And I think this
is more true than anything else with Eliasson’s: In Real Life.

Therefore, going back to what I said at the beginning about the theatre. Eliasson has
created a beautiful and complex world through ‘In Real Life’. In the same that a
designer or artist telling a story through theatre would. It’s equally as stunning whether
you consider its meaning or not. But if you do, he takes you on an epic journey through
nature, challenging really itself and doing what he ultimately thinks art should,
impacting the world.