The work of Icelandic-Danish artist Olafur Eliasson has always felt like a surreal supercharge for the senses to me, as if I’m somehow experiencing the strange magic of my own sight for the first time. His newest exhibition “Your psychoacoustic light ensemble” is currently on view at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery in New York and presents a range of perception-tripping new works, including watercolors that emulate spectral light, new color-shifting glass sculptures, and a surprising room where sound becomes visible and light feels audible. The whole thing adds up to an ethereal and wondrous dive into the rabbit hole for both the senses and the psyche.
Installation view, Olafur Eliasson “Your psychoacoustic light ensemble” at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery. Photo by Lance Brewer
Installation view, Olafur Eliasson’s “Your psychoacoustic light ensemble” at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery \\\ Photo: Pierre Le Hors
The centerpiece of the exhibition is a large dark room where six shape-shifting orbs of light fade in and out of existence like apparitions on the wall, distorting like rainbow puddles of water, clearly responding to a beautiful low-frequency harmony of music in the room. But this isn’t a recorded soundtrack synced to a digital projection – it’s a series of spotlights casting light onto a sound-distorting mirror that vibrates to each pitch. Here sound become visible and nearly-tactile in real time.
Installation view, Olafur Eliasson’s “Your psychoacoustic light ensemble” at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery \\\ Photo: Pierre Le Hors
Installation view, Olafur Eliasson’s “Your psychoacoustic light ensemble” at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery \\\ Photo: Lance Brewer
Eliasson’s work often reveals its own making – like a magician that shows you how a trick is done while only increasing the wonder of that magic. And in this work, viewers can either sit on a bench to experience the light and sound projection, or choose to walk around the spotlight-holding stands to inspect the flexible drum-like mirrors as they vibrate. This artwork isn’t just a theater with a single screen, it’s the whole room.
Installation view, Olafur Eliasson’s “Your psychoacoustic light ensemble” at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery \\\ Photo: Lance Brewer
Two exceptional new hanging glass works are also on view. The mesmerizing 5-foot diameter glass sculpture “Fierce tenderness sphere” is made from two types of glass – a yellow glass and a green/blue “colour-effect filter glass.” Together the countless triangles and angles of glass create surprising color-shifts as you change your angle and distance.
Olafur Eliasson, Fierce tenderness sphere, 2024 \\\ Photo: Pierre Le Hors
Olafur Eliasson, Fierce tenderness sphere (detail), 2024
Upstairs, the 8-foot-tall “Probability of conscious antigravitation” (below) merges five polyhedrons in a hanging color-shifting column. The front is made from colored glass while the back is black-backed mirrors. In reality, only three colors of glass are physically present (magenta, yellow, and cyan) but perceptually combine into a surprising range of colors as reflected light mixes and overlaps within each volume.
Olafur Eliasson, Probability of conscious antigravitation, 2023 (Installation view at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York) \\\ Photo: Pierre Le Hors
Olafur Eliasson, Probability of conscious antigravitation, 2023 (detail)
But my favorite room is the upstairs sky-lit gallery of new massive watercolors. Measuring up to 7-1/2 feet wide, these subtle gradients feel like ghosts of spectral light, as if a real rainbow is casting an image on white paper.
Olafur Eliasson, Installation view, Your psychoacoustic light ensemble, Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York \\\ Photo: Pierre Le Hors
Olafur Eliasson, Watercolour rainbow (to come), 2024 \\\ Photo: Pierre Le Hors
The watercolors, painted with multiple thin layers, feel like they’re made as much from light as pigment. On sunny days especially, a passing cloud outside the gallery may shift the natural light in the room, causing colors to change in saturation. It’s a reminder that these works (and all perception) is as much about the phenomena of our own human eyes as it is about physical objects we perceive.
Olafur Eliasson, Installation view, Your psychoacoustic light ensemble, Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York \\\ Photo: Pierre Le Hors
Olafur Eliasson, Ethereal watercolour rainbow, 2024
The exhibition concludes with a small white curtain that leads into a second dark room, this time projecting a “real” rainbow produced by a full-spectrum LED light and large curved prism-apparatus. Titled “Your rainbow horizon” the work presents a rainbow of real light that is tweaked slightly from our natural experience, appearing here as a straight line and in reverse color order.
Olafur Eliasson, Your rainbow horizon, 2024 \\\ Photo: Pierre Le Hors
In all, Olafur Eliasson’s “Your psychoacoustic light ensemble” finds brilliance between the etherial and the physical, revealing frequencies of sound and light with a calm beauty and infection curiosity that is a MUST-visit in real life.
Portrait of Olafur Eliasson, 2024 \\\ Photo: Louise Yeowart
What: Olafur Eliasson: Your psychoacoustic light ensemble
Where: Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, 521 W 21st St, New York, New York
When: October 24 – December 19, 2024
All images courtesy the artist and Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York / Los Angeles
