333 COLOUR EXPERIMENT 58 2014 by OLAFUR ELIASS0N

 TATE MODERN,  Clore Gallery

To step out of the current large exhibition of Turner's later works, Late Turner - Painting Set Free, into a small gallery showing 7 circular paintings - each tightly bound, meticulously measured, still and meditative - is quite a shock.

 Olafur Eliasson is the artist whose work The Weather Project 2003 attracted 2 million of us to Tate Modern. There his huge blowsy sun, with mist and mirrors high up on the ceiling, transformed the massive Turbine Hall into an unlikely playground.There was nothing for it but to stretch out on the floor and relish the 'sun'. Groups formed ingenious patterns reflected above. 

Some years later Eliasson introduced The Little Sun, a  solar-powered lamp (Blog 178). You expose the back of a solar panel to the sun for 5 hours, turn it over and you have stored 5 hours of strong light for the evening. Could it change, even save, many lives by replacing kerosene lamps which are expensive and a serious health hazard?

Once again Olafur Eliasson has turned his attention to light. 

  Colour experiment no. 58 2014  © 2013 Olafur Eliasson

Eliasson began his  Colour experiment paintings in 2009, analysing pigments, paint production and application of colour in order to mix paint in the exact colour for each nanometre of the visible light spectrum. Seven of his paintings are in the Clore Gallery, each analysing one of Turner's painting, isolating and recording his use of light and colour. 

 Turner’s ability to shape and frame light in his paintings has had a significant impact on my work….In the Turner colour experiments, I’ve isolated light and colour in Turner’s works in order to extract his sense of ephemera from the objects of desire that his paintings have become.  The schematic arrays of colours on round canvases generate a feeling of endlessness and allow the viewer to take in the artwork in a decentralised, meandering way. (Olafur Eliasson)

 

The Burning of the Houses of Lords and Commons, October 16, 1834,

One of the Colour experiments is based on Turner's representation of the fire which broke out in the Houses of Parliament in 1834. Tens of thousands of Londoners are said to have watched.Though started accidentally, the fire happened in a time of change and political instability. Turner sketched with pencil and watercolour what he saw from various vantage points, including a hired boat, in preparation for work with oils in the studio.He was at the beginning of what art critics have described as 'an astonishing creative flowering', a time when he produced many of his finest pictures, but was also controversial and misunderstood'

 Colour experiments:
www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-britain/display/olafur-eliasson-turner-colour-experiments


The Weather Project:
www.theguardian.com/uk/2003/oct/16/arts.artsnews1

The Little Sun:
www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/art-news/9395022/Olafur-Eliasson-launches-Little-Sun-project-and-Tat... 

www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-britain/exhibition/ey-exhibition-late-turner-painting-set-free