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Olafur
Eliasson has been working with the theme of orientation for a long time.
At the Berlin Biennial he presented a crazed fan, attached by a cable to
the ceiling of a wide round room, that rotated wildly on itself. Another
work exhibited at the Castello di Rivoli showed that part of the piece had
been reflected in such a way as to double the image through a game of lenses
and mirrors, giving the work an imaginary dimension. His work at the 1999
Venice Biennale consisted of a cage-labyrinth, a spiral to be walked through;
here although the visitor could see outside, paradoxically he felt even
more lost. A series of photographs taken in grottoes in Iceland underlines
how his attention focuses on recognition, on the excursion into the world,
on the search for those visual moments that inspire wonder for their unexpected
nature and that deal with problems of perception.
In Tuscany Eliasson was struck by the fact that, in the landscape around
Siena, towns are situated on hilltops. This position means that the towns
are very visible sites while also being sites from which many things are
visible. Historically there was the need to defend a territory which the
artist joins to the traveller’s need for orientation and his pleasure
in recognizing the panorama laid out before him. Eliasson unites these ideas
with the metaphorical meaning of light as an instrument for navigation (and
more generally as a guide for individual and collective existence) by creating
five beams of light, each one set up in a different town. |
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this way the countryside, crossed by waves of hills, becomes a kind of seascape
in which points of orientation are necessary. On the hills of Mensano, Monteguidi,
Lucciana, Pievescola and on the tower of the Casole d’Elsa town hall,
Eliasson has set his lights up on the highest point of each village. In
the daytime they look like sculptures (although only the one in Mensano
can be seen up close): they are each formed by a trestle that holds up a
light which in turn is shielded by lenses (to strengthen its effect) and
by a ring of colored plastic. As the sun sets the lights are activated intermittently.
Along the roads that join one town to another, one sees three, four, two
spotlights according to the viewpoint. The colour of each light depends
on the side from which it seen: the plastic rings have different colors
corresponding to the four cardinal points.
Ideally the landscape should be colored in sections as can be seen in a
drawing that the artist made on a topographical map. In effect the lights
are quite weak and they blend into the street lights and other night-time
illumination, but they stand out for their intermittency and colour. This
unexpected difference is slight and doesn’t make a startling contrast;
rather it creates a subtle magic that moves us to search for them among
the "normal" lights, just as one might look for a star in the
heavens: maybe a bit at random but able to inspire that child-like joy when
we find what we are looking for. |
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