Olafur Eliasson

In 2009, Prof. Olafur Eliasson founded the Institut für Raumexperimente, an educational research project, affiliated with the College of Fine Arts at the Berlin University of the Arts (UdK) and supported by the Senate for Education, Science and Research in Berlin.

The motivation behind Institut für Raumexperimente is Eliasson’s interest in testing models of learning, a fundamental trajectory being the cultivation of experimental formats to encourage the participants to develop critical tools with which to push their artistic work further while being aware of its broader social context.

Olafur Eliasson studied at The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen from 1989-1995 and established Studio Olafur Eliasson in Berlin in 1995. He represented Denmark at the 50th Venice Biennale in 2003 and later that year installed The weather project in the Turbine Hall of Tate Modern, London. Take your time: Olafur Eliasson, a survey exhibition organised by San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, travelled to further venues until 2010. His solo exhibition Innen Stadt Außen (Inner City Out) opened at Martin-Gropius-Bau in 2010, with interventions across Berlin developing a public dimension to the show. Eliasson has made a number of projects in public space, including the intervention Green river, carried out in various cities between 1998 and 2001; The Serpentine Gallery Pavilion 2007, designed with the architect Kjetil Thorsen; and The New York City Waterfalls, commissioned by Public Art Fund in 2008.