Olafur Eliasson Quotes

I've walked a lot in the mountains in Iceland. And as you come to a new valley, as you come to a new landscape, you have a certain view. If you stand still, the landscape doesn't necessarily tell you how big it is. It doesn't really tell you what you're looking at. The moment you start to move the mountain starts to move. ~ Olafur Eliasson

Photographs have a relevance for things that cannot be said. ~ Olafur Eliasson

I do not think making art alone makes it any better than making it with a team of people. ~ Olafur Eliasson

My goal is to formulate a new color theory based on the full spectrum of visible light. ~ Olafur Eliasson

It's hardly even noticeable that so many artists, designers and architects live here. It isn't reflected in the cityscape or in the museums. Many of the artists, for example, exhibit around the world, just not in Berlin. ~ Olafur Eliasson

By bringing Little Sun to Tate Modern and the London Olympics, I hope to realise an art project for those who typically have no access to global events of this scale. ~ Olafur Eliasson

I am not opposed to the art market. I have lots of friends who are collectors. But the whole idea of the art market is complex. Sadly we have a situation where auction houses and secondary market dealers are creating a lot of confusion and unnecessary pollution. ~ Olafur Eliasson

I don't know a single collector or museum director who says: 'Oh, he's on a list, so I think I'll buy something of his.' The people who buy my art put a little more thought into it than that. ~ Olafur Eliasson

I myself have already spent a third of my life in Germany, first in Cologne and then, since 1994, in Berlin. ~ Olafur Eliasson

I want to expose and evaluate the fact that the seeing and sensing process is a system that should not be taken for granted as natural - it's a cultivated means of reality production that, as a system, can be negotiated and changed. ~ Olafur Eliasson

1) Choose a person, older than yourself, you see frequently - not too often by approx once a week or once a month. Maybe one of your grandparents if they are still alive.
2) Every time you meet the chosen person you press your 2 pointing-fingers firmly against your eyes for 10 to 20 seconds until various colors and patterns arise.
3) Try to note or memorize the patterns and colors in connection with the context and repeat the practice every time you meet the chosen person for a as long as possible, minimum 6 months.
4) After minimum 6 months of this practice you can recall the person, virtually by pressing your eyes for a while. In the midst of the colors and pattern a sense of presence of the chosen person arrives even after the chosen person has died. ~ Hans Ulrich Obrist

Artists are valuable to public discussion: They show the correlation between doing and thinking. ~ Olafur Eliasson

Having an experience is taking part in the world. Taking part in the world is really about sharing responsibility. ~ Olafur Eliasson

I was interested in how we engage the world. How do we use our skin as our eyes? If you read a cityscape or a landscape with just your mind, and not your body, it becomes like a picture or representation, not something you really engage with. ~ Olafur Eliasson

In the past Berlin was much more radical and extreme and now it's becoming much more of a conventional European city. ~ Olafur Eliasson

It would be wrong to say that the city of Berlin is not regulated. What I think is more interesting is to what extent a city creates a sort of safe haven for its users, so that people feel confident that the city works on their behalf. ~ Olafur Eliasson

When museums are left with so little money that their future is in the hands of private donors, then they are unable to develop their own signatures by collecting themselves. On the other hand, though, I think we should also celebrate the fact that there is a lot of art that lives outside of, or on the outskirts of, the art market - and it is doing quite well. ~ Olafur Eliasson

I see the artist as a participant, a co-producer of reality. ~ Olafur Eliasson

I think an artist has the potential to investigate both form and content within one activity, to show that there can be coherence between form and values in our society, as in thinking about a city and building one. ~ Olafur Eliasson

I can support Al-Qaeda, the Ku Klux Klan, buy weapons and drugs and all kinds of porn with my Visa card. There is nobody investigating this, but I cannot support a human rights organisation which is fighting for freedom of expression, - Olafur Sigurvinsson, supporter of wikileaks, taken from article by RT discussing a court battle over freedom to donate money to wikileaks. ~ Olafur Sigurvinsson

The night is about to lull everything and everyone to sleep. I stretch myself at the window and open it so that the books can breathe fresh damp air. I suspect that books need to breathe like people, and I think they tolerate damp better than people say. There is no doubt that they stare rather sadly at the trees out in the garden, as if they have a vague recollection of relationship with them, and sighs are borne from the pages to the damp trunks and branches.
I begin to sigh too, for I feel that people are like trees that move, trees that have lost their roots and are always in search of the soil. I have a hazy idea that humans have come from trees that broke off from their roots in a wild whirlwind eons ago - that is my thory of evolution. ~ Gyrdir Eliasson

Without peace there is no development, and without development there is no peace ~ Jan Eliasson

For all the civilians saved thanks to the presence of peacekeepers, there have been those who were lost - the United Nations personnel who sacrificed their lives for a noble cause. Even as we mourn our fallen colleagues, we are all uplifted by their unflinching commitment and are inspired to strive even harder for the collective cause so eloquently envisaged in the United Nations Charter: a world free from the scourge of war. ~ Jan Eliasson

Without passion, nothing happens; without compassion, the wrong things happen. ~ Jan Eliasson

The Pleiades and northern lights are still above the mountain. The mountain is in the east, and on its slopes there are reindeer. Reindeer always remind me of trees that have taken to moving. They remind me even more of trees than people do. In the distant past, reindeer were trees as people were, but they haven't come such a long way from their origins, and the branches can be seen although they no longer bear leaves.
I have my bedtime book in my hand and my pocket light and walk toward the mountain over the edges of the moorland in rubber boots. The book is a relative of mine, I feel; it is made out of trees and human thought, and thus the relationship becomes twofold. These are ancient poems that I am taking to the mountains and the reindeer. ~ Gyrdir Eliasson

Our work must remain open and transparent so that we hear the voices of all ~ Jan Eliasson