Olafur Eliasson Solo Exhibition at the Palace of Versailles

Text and photos by Chen Chi-Hsiang. Dates: June 7 to October 30. Location: Inside the Palace of Versailles and its gardens. The Contemporary Art Exhibition at the Palace of Versailles has entered its ninth year, inviting one contemporary artist annually to create a bespoke exhibition for the interior or exterior spaces. This event has become an annual contemporary art feast and institution in Paris, attracting art lovers from around the globe on pilgrimages and bringing more visitors to the palace. This year, the renowned Icelandic-Danish artist Olafur Eliasson is invited. He integrates his environmental installations into the theater of the Versailles fountain garden, designed by French gardening master André Le Nôtre with its play of light and water. This not only echoes the garden but fully embodies the spirit of French gardens, while offering reflection on today’s natural environment and climate change.

Olafur Eliasson (b. 1967), an Icelandic artist born in Denmark, is one of today’s most innovative creators who frequently turns the impossible into reality. His magnificent imagery of natural landscapes stems from the fantastical scenery of his homeland, Iceland. His creative expression, rich in interest, blends nature and humanity, crossing boundaries between nature, architecture, design, technology, and sculpture. He excels at manipulating natural elements such as light, water, mist, rainbows, and moss. Through modern technological devices like mirrors, glass, neon lights, spotlights, and colorful paints, he constructs scenes that are both dreamlike and real, miraculously transforming viewers’ situations and consciousness. People feel as if they are in a natural secret realm, enhancing their realistic sensory experiences and impressions. These works transform us as we participate in these metamorphoses, drawing us deeper into appearances and awakening spiritual consciousness.

In the Garden: The Olafur Eliasson special exhibition at the Palace of Versailles features only six works: three poetic outdoor garden pieces and three inside the palace, all dramatically playing with optical illusions. The most striking is Floating Waterfall (waterfall), installed behind the magnificent Apollo Fountain on the Versailles Canal. A 40-meter-high waterfall cascades thunderously from the sky, rivaling the Apollo Fountain in majestic beauty. It awakens the natural energy of thousands of troops and human consciousness, materially embodying the spiritual essence of the French garden.

Glacial Rock Flower Garden is placed in the stunning circular colonnade, surrounded by 64 painted marble columns. With classical sculptures as the core, the square-like space features dry, cracked earth on the ground, presenting the harsh conditions of humanity under climate change, contrasting sharply with the exquisite humanistic aesthetic to raise environmental awareness. This follows his previous work at the International Climate Conference, where he used melting ice blocks in front of the Panthéon in Paris to provoke reflection on humanity’s future under severe climate change.

Fog Assembly is located in the woods of the Place Étoile. In this lush green natural theater, a large circular mist sprayer creates a hazy atmosphere, similar to those used in Parisian beaches or shops to cool down during heatwaves. The ethereal mist offers relief from summer heat waves, creating a unique experience. Occasionally, a psychedelic rainbow appears in the sunlight, allowing people to experience the perceptual moment when water vapor evaporates.

Inside the Court: There are three site-specific works inside the Palace of Versailles, all located next to the visually grand Hall of Mirrors, which adds significance as all three relate to mirrors and light. The artist intends to engage in a dialogue with the Hall of Mirrors through the reflection of mirrors and the transformation of virtual and real spaces, providing audiences with extraordinary visual and sensory experiences.

Your Sense of Unity is located in the Salon de la Paix (one side of the Hall of Mirrors). It constructs a closed hexagonal mirror hall with two large circular neon lights. Through mirror reflections, multiple circles (three or four depending on the angle) are mapped out. Viewers can only observe from within the mirror hall to feel the transformation of virtual and real time and space.

Deep Mirror-Blank, the most dramatic masterpiece among the three, is filled with visual and hallucinatory effects. Installed near the King’s Bedroom, it plays with the king’s power or magic? The illusion of vanishing reality and spectacular environmental installation seems to bury mirrors in a space illuminated by mirror-facing lights. On one side is a golden circle, on the other a black circle. Facing each other, looking at the gold reveals a complete small black circle in the center; looking at the black circle from the opposite side reveals a crescent moon shape, while the mirror reflects a golden crescent moon hanging in the air. This exceeds human imagination and perception, offering a beautiful transformation of virtual and real spatial images that is magical, like being in a natural secret realm. Such experience and perception are extraordinary.

Solar Compression, regarding the transformation and imagination of environmental space, places a flat, double-sided circular mirror in the middle of the Queen’s Guard Room. The compressed sun hangs like an eclipse in the space, rotating continuously. As it turns, shifting from a golden hue to a flat circular mirror surface, it flips the visitor’s movement through time and space scenes, embodying the transformation of virtual and real time and space, manifesting a dreamlike situation that shows human existential consciousness.

Artist Olafur Eliasson says: "How do we create an idea that can encompass both the individual and the collective without dividing them into two opposing camps? I would say art and culture, which is why art and culture are so interesting. In the period we are living in, it has proven that people can create a space that is sensitive to both the individual and the collective. This is greatly related to cause and effect, and also to how thoughts and actions are connected. So what lies between thought and action? What lies between thought and action, I would say, is experience. Experience is not just a vague form of entertainment; experience is related to responsibility. To have experience is to become part of the world, and to become part of the world is related to sharing responsibility. Art, in this sense, I believe it possesses an astonishing relevance to the world we are entering, especially right here and now, which is what I want to say." Source: Olafur Eliasson_Library Download