When I saw Eliasson’s book in the library, I was really surprised by how emotional I still get just by looking at the name of him. The feeling of vomiting when I saw his exhibition last time in Beijing came back to me quietly yet so familiarly.
And on the way back carrying this book to upstairs, I met a few friends smoking at the gate, they asked:“Oh, do you like his work?” I laughed and said “I kind of vomit last time at his exhibition, but yet I chose him to write an essay, I really can’t answer this question so frivolously now. ”
Maybe that’s exactly why I chose his book, I want to discuss this complicated emotion in the form of language. Yes, language, by creating another kind of “reality” on the base of concept to connect with the “reality” he tries to present in his work.
What can I remember about his last work? I remember the crowded crowd in the orange light which made them look like pale zombie , and everyone was either taking picture or standing there for minutes without moving — taking selfies. Kids were jumping and shouting, having so much wild fun. And the air conditioner is working so good, maybe too good, maybe that’s part of reason I wanted to vomit, my stomach always react really strongly to cold air.
Why? I could’t stop asking myself at the exhibition, why I (and so many people) spent at least an hour on cars —it was a quite remote museum, to come here, to experience this kind of, what he called “Reality”. When we can see the real rain, the real sunset, is this kind of imitation “reality” of the nature, somehow touches us more than the real “reality”?
It is very beautiful, I was thinking, it’s almost like the beauty like when I see the real rainbow, then I thought about isn’t the vulnerable and unpredictable character makes rainbow so strikingly impressive? Then what is this ? You drive an hour and paid something like 20 euros, to go into this huge artificial box, which is so cold that makes you wanna vomit in the hot summer, and in this totally dark space when outside is so sun shining , you saw the beauty of nature, and you praised, “Ah, what a sublime scene of this blue planet that we call home.”
Book Info ?Olafur Eliasson Reality Machine
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