It’s my life: About Olafur Eliasson’s show LIFE at Fondation Beyeler

The pond of the Riehen­er Fon­da­tion Beyel­er oth­er­wise cor­re­sponds to Monet’s water lily pic­tures. It is, as it were, the con­nect­ing bridge between the muse­um park and the muse­um itself. With his cur­rent exhi­bi­tion LIFE, the Berlin artist Ola­fur Elias­son rad­i­cal­izes this con­nec­tion: He col­ors the water a poi­son green, tears open the win­dows of the foun­da­tion, builds bridges and extends the pond deep into the exhi­bi­tion rooms. What an effort for a tem­po­rary, ephemer­al work of art.

A mem­o­ry of an expe­ri­ence of my youth impos­es itself on me. I grew up less than five kilo­me­ters from the loca­tion of today’s Fon­da­tion Beyel­er. It was Novem­ber 1, 1986, I was 15. In the “Schweiz­er­halle” chem­i­cal site in Basel, a ware­house belong­ing to the chem­i­cal com­pa­ny San­doz – now Novar­tis – is burn­ing bright­ly, the air stinks, the Rhine is col­ored red with dis­col­ored extin­guish­ing water. Mean­while I’m not sure whether we went to see it, but in any case the image of the dis­col­ored Rhine from tele­vi­sion left an impres­sion on me.

The poi­son green col­or of the Beyel­er pond urges you to approach the water and see if there is still life there. And now my six-year-old son, whom I had with me in the exhi­bi­tion, comes into play. Julius lay down on the edge of the pond and looked inside what was to be dis­cov­ered besides the col­or­ing. And he found: water snails at the edge of the pond, tad­poles in all pos­si­ble stages of devel­op­ment (with­out legs, with four legs) and drag­on­flies. It’s amaz­ing that the arti­fi­cial­i­ty of the pond final­ly makes you want to take a clos­er look at the life in it.

And maybe the six-year-old under­stood the work of art bet­ter than some art experts on site. Julius ran up and down the walk­ways, in the muse­um, out again, tram­pled along the walk­way so that his steps echoed, laughed screech­ing, enjoyed the thrill (no handrail on the walk­way!). I want to know what would have hap­pened if he slipped and fell into the ankle-deep pond. In any case, it would­n’t have been as bad as a fall against a Gia­comet­ti sculp­ture. I think.

But you can also just sit out­side in the “amphithe­ater” and look at the pond and the vis­i­tors. „Get caught up in the invo­lu­tion­ary momen­tum that pro­pels these beings to get entan­gled in one another’s lives and you will soon start to per­ceive affec­tive ecolo­gies tak­ing shape among the thick­et of rela­tions all around you,” explains anthro­pol­o­gist Natasha Myers.

Addi­tion­al lev­els of expe­ri­ence result from a night­ly vis­it, but also from a vir­tu­al, kalei­do­scop­ic vis­it via livestream on Eliasson’s web­site: https://olafureliasson.net/life/ . With LIFE, Elias­son address­es the exhi­bi­tion loca­tion as part of a work of art, and we come across the fact that one of the key pro­tag­o­nists in the cre­ation of a work of art is the recip­i­ent. So: we. Elias­son explains: „With Life, I work active­ly to cre­ate a space of coex­is­tence among those involved in and affect­ed by the exhi­bi­tion – the art insti­tu­tion, my art­work, the vis­i­tors, oth­er beings that join in, the trees and oth­er plants in the park, the urban land­scape that sur­rounds the muse­um, and beyond. Through col­lec­tive­ly explor­ing the world we share, we can, I hope, make it liv­able for all species.“

Go and expe­ri­ence it at Fon­da­tion Beyel­er, Riehen, Switzer­land. Learn more on https://life.fondationbeyeler.ch/en

OPENING HOURS:

Mon­day to Sun­day 10–18
Wednes­day 10–20
► Life acces­si­ble around the clock (Tick­ets 9 a.m.-9 p.m.)
FONDATION BEYELER
Basel­strasse 101
CH-4125 Riehen/Basel