Olafur Eliasson Tests the Complexities of Our Visual and Psychoacoustic Perception at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery
From colors and qualities of light we cannot perceive accurately to frequencies of sound inaudible to our ears, a significant portion of the phenomena in the cosmos remains out of reach to us. Moving between aesthetics and physics and working at the intersection of art and science, Icelandic-Danish artist Olafur Eliasson is known for exploring ephemeral phenomena in his work with dynamic materials like light, color and frequency, which shape our experience of reality even though their complexity often surpasses the limits of our senses.
In his newly opened show at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, “Your psychoacoustic light ensemble,” Eliasson delves even deeper into the fringes of perception, playing with light frequencies and exploring sounds and vibrations—an often underrated medium in art—as an essential part of human experience and the universe’s composition. Observer enjoyed an exclusive walkthrough of the show with the artist, who shared insights into the processes and themes his new works examine, challenge and deconstruct to create awareness of how we orient ourselves in this world.
The exhibition’s central installation is an immersive spatial soundscape, an engaging synesthetic experience that harmoniously blends visual and sensory elements. This work is the result of a complex orchestration that translates light into sound through shared frequencies that align with the universe. In this way, circles of light move, expand and interlace in the dark room, tracing the wavelength of sound itself.
“This is a piece of music that is made from the light to the sound, not from the sound to the light,” Olafur explained to us. To achieve this effect, he first crafted and adjusted the exact light composition with mirrors, refining the colors and gradients until they created the desired “painting” of this synthetic environment, which he then completed with sound. Once again, Eliasson demonstrates his ability to use waves and frequencies—whether light or sound—as the primary medium for his compositions.
SEE ALSO: KAWS On Mao, Death, Monsters and His Nobu Tequila Collab
While light and sound operate in distinct ranges of the electromagnetic and acoustic spectra, the invisible factors of wave frequency and length determine whether we hear a particular sound or see a specific color. Sound is a mechanical wave that travels through a medium (such as air, water, or solids), with the frequency determining if it will produce a low-pitched sound (e.g., bass) or a high-pitched one (e.g., treble). For light, however, it is the frequency or wavelength of the electromagnetic wave that determines color, as Eliasson explains during our walkthrough. He elaborated that every “surface and material has its vibrancy, which regulates the relation with the space.” This synesthetic experimentation creates a meditative, harmonious sequence that transports visitors to another realm, allowing them to sense a hidden harmony within the universe. “It is eventually harmonious; it has this beautiful sense of harmony, like an inhaling and exhaling.”
This installation, which engages both the psyche and the senses through frequencies, lends itself to the show’s title, focused on the concept of “psychoacoustics.” This theme addresses Eliasson’s interest in the inherent relativity of perception and how our senses and their psychological processing shape our experience and understanding of the world—despite the inherent limits that keep many phenomena beyond our full comprehension.
At the gallery entrance, one of his suspended sculptures, Fierce Tenderness Sphere, expands into the space, decomposing light into its spectrum across innumerable quadrangles. With every viewer’s movement, the sculpture shifts, creating an interplay of light, color and form that offers a multifaceted and layered experience, revealing new perspectives and meanings within the same shape.
Upstairs, Olafur continues his exploration of color phenomena and how they are perceived and accessible to us, depending on the wavelengths of light that objects reflect, transmit, or emit. As in many of the artist’s works, and much as with sound, humans can only perceive a narrow band of the electromagnetic spectrum due to our eyes’ receptors (cones) that respond to only specific wavelengths, allowing us to perceive only specific colors. However, this does not mean that this is the only way vision might work in the universe—especially when viewed from a different perspective or with advanced tools.
The concept of color as reflection, emanation or transmission is central to the processes from which the artist’s works originate. “Color does not exist in itself, only when looked at,” he said. “The unique fact that color only materializes when light bounces off a surface onto our retinas shows us that the analysis of colors is, in fact, about the ability to analyze ourselves.”
In the first gallery, the artist is presenting a new body of work: a vibrant watercolor piece in which shades of green and yellow expand circularly and fluidly, as though something has collided at its nucleus and spread outward. Olafur explains that this piece results from a partially intuitive process: allowing an ice cube, along with bleach, to melt on a surface treated with watercolor and ink. Over time, the melting ice activates a transformation of pigments, which expand across the canvas in different gradations, transforming black into green and, eventually, yellow. Here, black—the absence of light and wavelength—is symbolically interrupted by the bleach’s aggressive chemical reaction, allowing color to reemerge as the ice melts and alters the composition.
In a nearby dark room, the artist has installed a band of light containing all colors in the visible spectrum, appearing as a reflection—similar to sunlight hitting glass or the rainbow formed by raindrops. By using bright white light on a colorful arc, he creates a flat reflection resembling a horizon or boreal line that shines out of the darkness. “It’s in darkness that you understand the need for some light,” Olafur enigmatically noted. By staging this light reflection, the artist essentially “paints” within the space with a single, precise stroke that captures all the colors contained in any natural light ray, achieving with scientific precision the “illusion of light” long pursued by painters throughout art history.
In Tanya Bonakdar’s main sky-lit gallery, the artist has hung large watercolor works that evoke the fleeting luminosity of a rainbow on paper. Here, the interplay between light, color and paint becomes even more nuanced: ethereal watercolors suggest the hues in the visible light spectrum, akin to sunlight reflecting off a white surface. Bathed in the full range of colors, these works attempt to capture something our senses often struggle to fully perceive. As the artist explained, here he is painting “the impossibility of what we can see, painting something that is beyond vision, or saying something that we almost can’t see.”
The works begin with grey paint underneath; when multiple colors accumulate densely, they blend and return to grey. These watercolors are painted on wet surfaces, applied in delicate, repetitive layers in an almost ritualistic manner, allowing colors to emerge only to fade back to grey. “It’s like white paper bouncing through the middle of the color,” Olafur said. The result is works that have a special glow, as if the colors have absorbed the light spectrum that bathed them and now transmit it to the viewer’s eye. This vaporous, diaphanous effect surrounds the viewer, filling the room with color—like sunlight bathing the paper and translating wavelengths into hues and tones that expand through the space.
By challenging and testing viewers’ perceptions of color and light, and this time incorporating sound, Eliasson has crafted an immersive exploration that allows us to understand how perception of these elements shapes our environments. Highlighting the complex relationship between the senses and psyche, Olafur reveals how we navigate them, consciously or otherwise, within an interplay of frequencies and wavelengths that silently and invisibly surround us. This work links all these experiences to a perpetual cycle of energy and particles governed by the cosmos’s largely impenetrable rules. Acknowledging the limitations of sensory perception, Eliasson offers a glimpse into the vast realm beyond our immediate awareness, emphasizing that our understanding of the world is inherently relative.
Olafur Eliasson’s Midnight Moment
In addition to the exhibition at Tanya Bonakdar, Olafur Eliasson will present a work in New York City’s Times Square throughout November as part of the Midnight Moment program. Every night from 11:57 pm to midnight, his piece Lifeworld will transform the iconic billboards with a mesmerizing sequence of floating light forms that mimic the cityscape’s vibrant energy. In this work, Eliasson seeks to capture and abstract the essence of the iconic spot by filming its screens from various perspectives, creating an intentional blur that suspends these light stimuli in time and space. Removed from their usual meanings and messages, these stimuli become pure atmosphere, with shimmering abstract shapes and dancing colors inviting viewers to slow down and creatively reimagine the urban landscape.
“It’s a thrill, but the environment also determines my actions—driving me mostly to spend or to consume,” the artist said in a statement. “Lifeworld shows the immediate site anew, and its hazy qualities may prompt questions. If you are suddenly confronted with the reality of having a choice, you might ask what cities, lives and environments we want to inhabit? And how do I want to take part in them?”
This Midnight Moment marks Eliasson’s first project as guest curator for WeTransfer, which has partnered with CIRCA as an exclusive Digital Screen Partner. “By abstracting the energy of Times Square itself, Eliasson’s Lifeworld offers a rare moment of meditation—a poetic gesture on a monumental scale that holds the potential to ground us in a place designed to economize our attention perpetually and in a political climate that offers little psychic reprieve,” said Jean Cooney, Director of Times Square Arts. “We’re excited to present this timely and distinctive Midnight Moment and join this global collaboration.” Coinciding with the Times Square display, Lifeworld also appears every evening at 8:24 p.m. local time through December 31 on Piccadilly Lights in London, K-Pop Square in Seoul, Limes Kurfürstendamm in Berlin and online 24/7 on WeTransfer.com.
Olafur Eliasson’s “Your Psychoacustic Light Ensemble” is on view at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery through December 19. The show is timed with the November presentation of his work “Lifeworld in Times Square, part of the “Midnight Moment” initiative.