Ólafur Eliasson

As a child he lived in Hafnarfjörður in Iceland. In 1989 he began studying art at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Art in Copenhagen. During his studies he presented his works in Berlin. Six years later he completed his studies. Eliasson attracted international attention as a young artist. He was honored with the Bremen Art Prize in 1997 and the Edstrand Foundation Art Prize a year later. In the same year he started the "Green River" project, which he ran until 2001: he colored the water of rivers around the world with a non-toxic bright green dye. This was the first time that the leitmotif of Eliason's art work became publicly apparent: he creates art outdoors with great effect, playing with light, water and other physical natural phenomena. The reactions of the viewer are included in the fascinating work of art and are part of it.

The "Weather Project" in London's Tate Gallery of Modern Art in 2003/04 was just as spectacular: he created the illusion of a large sun standing above misty clouds. The following year, Eliasson played with light in Munich: for the rehearsal building of the Bavarian State Opera, he created an unusual glass facade that he called a stage window. The 300 m2 area not only reflects what is happening in the nearby square, but also forms a spatial closure. In 2006 he received the Friedrich Kiesler Prize and the Danish Crown Prince Couple's Culture Prize. The following year, 2007, the recognized Joan Miró Prize followed. In 2008, the artist created four large artificial waterfalls in Manhattan, which flowed a total of more than 13 billion liters of water for 110 days. In the same year he installed "Yellow fog" on the Austrian Electricity Industry AG building in Vienna. In the evening, the façade was bathed in yellow mist, which underlined the play with the phenomena of wind, fog and light.

Furthermore, the work of art created spatial transitions that were intended to change the view of urban space. The artist made the abstract concept of space an art theme in order to make it perceptible. Olafur Eliasson works and lives in Berlin and Copenhagen. He also has his own studio in the German capital, where he has lived primarily since 1994. In 2008 he accepted a call from the University of the Arts, where he has been a professor since 2009. His other awards include the Austrian Friedrich Kiesler Prize in 2006 for his outstanding work in architecture and the arts according to Friedrich Kiesler's theory of "correlated arts". In the same year, Eliasson was awarded the Danish Crown Prince Couple's Cultural Prize.