Artistic experiences

Yesterday I went to ARKEN, a museum for modern art here in Copenhagen, with my parents and my semi-aunt & uncle. Right now they have 3 different exhibitions. The main reason for us going there was Olafur Eliasson, a danish-islantic artist known for The New York Waterfalls, The Weather Project (giant sun) at Tate Modern and the Danish Opera's chandeliers (at least that's something he's famous for here).

The must-see piece is the "Your Change Encounter", which is a looong tunnel made of wood etc. Prior to going in there, we knew nothing about the piece. Only that there was a warning-sign outside, stating that if you had some pretty common health problems you shouldn't go in there. One of them being having trouble breathing normally - and I have astma.

My first reaction upon going in there was actually fear. The tunnel is filled with a fog so heavy that you can't see a person who's standing 1 m away from you. I immediately turned around and was about to exit the tunnel, but my parents persuaded me to stay.

Just look at that visibility! That is myself and I couldn't even see one meter down my body.

"Your Change Encounter" is made up of that fog. When you first go into the tunnel the light seems pretty natural though very bright. Then the light slowly disappears and you walk in complete darkness. Then the fog turns yellow, orange, red, green, blue, purple, white and all the colours are so VIBRANT. All the while you can't see a thing because of the fog.

It was such a good experience that we just had to take another go after having seen the rest of the exhibitions. We went to the museum at night and I think that there were only 10 guests there in total - ourselves included. That way we had the tunnel all to ourselves both times. The second time though the fog was almost gone - probably because the museum was nearing it's closing time.

Due to the lack of fog we could see much further the second time and the experience was so different. The footsteps on the floor from during the day were visible as well. I think the second picture is actually kind of creepy even though the light looks like it's coming from the sun or something like that, haha.

My mom and I on the upper pictures.

I apologize if the light is to strong for you but I just wanted to give you guys an idea about how it actually looked. It was actually very beautiful, which is odd seeing that it's a man-made object. But I felt like I was somewhat looking at nature itself.

The man can do magic when it comes to light. He's made so many interesting and magnificent pieces and I was blown away to see them in real life. If you're interested in seeing more of his works, go to his gallery here: http://www.olafureliasson.net/works.html

Another one of his creations, this one called "Your Negotiable Panorama". Before you enter the area, the line is completely staright, but the minute you enter it starts creating waves. It took us a while to figure out how it happened, but here's a clue for you: In the middle there was a pool of water...

We had a lot of fun taken pictures and normally I think we'd stopped much quicker. But the fact that we were almost alone at the museum gave us a feeling that it was all right to have fun with the artworks a little longer than usually.

Somewhat it almost looked like the universe... or a galaxy.

Afterwards we watched a documentary about Olafur Eliasson and it was a very good way to get to know him better as an artist. It created a nice frame around our visit.

Recognize that lamp in the background? Yes, that is the pink one from further up in the post.

Hans Scherfig also had an exhibition there. His works are very different but Danes generally love them to pieces. The style is so naive. I really liked the colours from that first one... I've seen a lot of his art in that genre, but I was quite surprised to see the latter of the elephant graveyard - it is so much more brutal than his other works. That was very interesting.

Okay, super-too-long post ending now. Can you tell what that last painting is depicting??

<3**