Weng Contemporary

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Contact is Content at Seljalandsfoss-Olafur Eliasson-1

Hiking through the Icelandic landscape means to get oneself into it. In this loneliness full of moss, lichens, volcanic stones and the melancholic bird-call of the golden plover high above it, it is difficult, Eliasson once said, to say if a destination is 30 minutes away or maybe three hours or three days. So the question is about the point of view, about the perspective one has. There is a recurring motif of waterfalls within the artist’s oeuvre, beginning with his photo-documentation of them in Iceland in 1996 – when this image of Seljalandsfoss was taken – expanding to his installations Waterfall and Reverse waterfall in 1998, and culminating in the four massive artificial waterfalls the artist erected in the East River in 2008 as part of The New York City Waterfalls.

“ People see space as a compilation, the placing of layers on top of each other. But you can also make a space by removing all the surrounding elements and then seeing what’s left. „

Olafur Eliasson