For an artist so deeply embedded in Berlin’s cultural fabric that his Death Star-sized studio has, at one time or other, employed half your friends, it’s surprisincolog how little Olafur Eliasson’s work has been visible in the city of late. This marks his ninth (!) exhibition with neugerriemschneider and he’s returning to well-trodden paths: the physical properties of light, specifically polarisation.
At first glance, the show resembles a dry science experiment with tiny motors spinning giant, transparent discs from the ceiling. But with a change in vantage point, or movement, the work suddenly bursts into vivid, astonishing colour. In one room, high-intensity lights beam across the courtyard and, through a process known as birefringence, their component colour rays are prised apart and scattered across the gallery walls. It’s sombre and spectacular, like watching the sun stream through stained-glass windows.
In a second piece, a blanket of light ripples like a digital sail; scratchy and glitchy, it’s difficult even to process what you’re seeing. The way the show’s been arranged, a drab installation can explode with colour from another side of the room, rewarding the aimless wanderer. The exhibition text makes a stab at linking it all to themes of perception and “inclusionary” viewpoints – but then you’re here to look, not here to read.
- The lure of looking through a polarised window of opportunities, or seeing a surprise before it’s reduced, split, and then further reduced, Through Aug 9, neugerriemschneider, Prenzlauer Berg
