This catalogue documents the encounter between Eliasson's sensorial artworks and the baroquean atmosphere of Prince Eugene's Winter Palace in Vienna.
“Olafur Eliasson: Baroque Baroque” is an ambitious exhibition that brings together and reconnects some of Olafur Eliasson's most distinguished works from the collections of TBA21 and the Juan and Patricia Vergez Collection. The overview of artworks from two decades explores the affinities between his work and the extraordinary baroque setting of the Belvedere's Winter Palace of Prince Eugene of Savoy in Vienna. As an accompaniment to the exhibition, the catalogue Olafur Eliasson: Baroque Baroque examines some of the trajectories of thought raised by the encounter between Eliasson's artworks and their temporary baroque housing: in particular, how transformations of space, perception, and cognition reflect the realms of politics, technology, and the Anthropocene.
Published on the occasion of the exhibition “Olafur Eliasson: Baroque Baroque,” Winterpalais, Vienna, from November 21, 2015, to March 6, 2016.
Olafur Eliasson (born 1967, lives and works in Copenhagen and Berlin) grew up in Iceland and Denmark and studied, from 1989 to 1995, at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts. In 1995, he moved to Berlin and founded Studio Olafur Eliasson, which today encompasses some ninety craftsmen, specialised technicians, architects, archivists, administrators, programmers, art historians, and cooks. Olafur Eliasson's art is driven by his interests in perception, movement, embodied experience, and feelings of self. Eliasson strives to make the concerns of art relevant to society at large. Art, for him, is a crucial means for turning thinking into doing in the world. Eliasson's diverse works—in sculpture, painting, photography, film, and installations—have been exhibited widely throughout the world. Not limited to the confines of the museum and gallery, his practice engages the broader public sphere through architectural projects and interventions in civic space.
Edited by Francesca Habsburg, Agnes Husslein, Daniela Zyman.
Contributions by Mario Codognato, Irmgard Emmelhainz, Paul Feigelfeld, Georg Lechner, Sandra Noeth, Mirjam Schaub, Daniela Zyman.
