Gallery 208
In his childhood Eliasson traveled regularly to Iceland, forging a strong connection to his parents’ home country and its landscape. In 1999, he photographed several dozen glaciers there for an artwork called The glacier series. Twenty years later, he returned to photograph the same glaciers again. The glacier melt series 1999/2019 (2019) brings together thirty pairs of images from 1999 and 2019 to reveal the dramatic impact that global warming is having on our world.
Attached to a cord and suspended from the ceiling in this Gallery, an electric fan swings erratically and irregularly through space. The readymade kinetic sculpture Ventilator (1997) is propelled by the air it displaces.
Finally, visitors find a long sofa composed of modular segments, upholstered in a unique fabric of knitted wool. Designed by Eliasson in collaboration with the Danish textile firm Kvadrat, the sofa suggests the rippling sand left behind by the receding tide.