"I was interested in how we engage the world. How do we use our skin as our eyes? If you read a cityscape or landscape with just your mind, and not your body, it becomes like a picture or representation, not something you really engage with." -Olafur Eliasson
Time to paint toenails and watch The City? Check. Time to nag boyfriend? Check. Time to appreciate art? Not so much. (And no, watching your co-worker doodle an inappropriate sketch during a meeting, does not count as art appreciation.) Most likely, it is high time to set aside some of that precious time to see some real art. Those in the Dallas area are in luck with the visiting exhibition Take Your Time by Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson at the Dallas Museum of Art.
The Dallas exhibit includes most of the works from the shows at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (where the show orginiated) and New York's MOMA. This is the third stop for the internationally acclaimed exhibit that Time Magazine named one of the best exhibits of the year and KERA calls a "fun house tour of visual delights." So, what exactly will you be looking at? MOMA described his works as "probing the cognitive aspects of what it means to see, Eliasson creates complex optical phenomena using simple, makeshift technical devices." And the coolest part: you do not just see the art, you are in it. Or as those in the art world like to say, you "experience" it. Among the most notable pieces are "Beauty" where the viewer enters a dark room with black walls that has a spotlight on a curtain of mist that falls onto the floor, creating a rainbow, depending on the position of the viewer, and a new work for the Dallas exhibit,"The Outside of Inside". This piece is an installation where visitors sit on white benches in a white room as colorful geometric patterns are projected on the walls. The spectator's eyes then create afterimages. "Tunnel" is a piece where the visitor walks through a tunnel of mirrors, leading to a room bathed in yellow light that in turn makes everything look gray. The title Take Your Time references taking the time to observe and experience Eliasson's art which playfully experiments with light, color and space.
Take Your Time will show at the DMA until March 15. After Dallas, the exhibit will go to the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, opening in May. Take a look at some of the works online, here.
image source: moma.org
-SD
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