
I only see things when they move, 2004. See the video. (Photos by C-M.)
If you did lots of drugs in college and you liked how they made you feel, then the Olafur Eliasson show at MoMA is just the high art gig for you. There’s lights, there’s strobes, there’s swinging fans. There’s a hallway that fucks with your sense of perception. All the place needs is thumping electronica. It’s over-the-top and totally tripped-out. And the best part? It doesn’t give you dry-mouth.
The spectacle runs through June 30th.
See many more pics after the jump. Click on images to supersize.

Ventilator, 2007. See the video.

A photograph cannot even begin to convey the total weirdness of this piece, titled Room For One Colour (1997). A series of super-bright, yellow-tinted neon tubes line the second floor hallway, making anyone under it feel like a Big Mac under a heat lamp. The really cool effect, however, is that the yellow light distorts all sense of color in the eye, rendering everything you see black and white. (The camera can’t capture this.) For a moment, yesterday afternoon, I found myself somewhat dazed, standing in the MoMA hallway staring at my hand, and going, ‘Whoa, I’m in black and white.’

Negative quasi brick wall, 2008.

1 m3 light, 1999. I have a feeling that if you stand in the middle of this, it’d be totally Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

Detail: Moss wall, 1994. This one seemed kinda Andy Goldsworthy but still looked cool. It’s a bunch of reindeer moss growing on the gallery wall. I so badly wanted to squeeze it.

360º Degree Room for All Colours, 2002, a circular room that goes from pink to white to green to blue…
There was one other piece which I wanted to photograph and couldn’t. Not because of museum policy or anything like that, but because the strobe lights reeked havoc with my camera’s automatic light sensor. You can, however, see a video of Our Strange Certainty Still Kept, the fine-art equivalent of an ecstasy trip, here.
Posted by C-Monster.
“and the best part? It doesn’t give you dry-mouth”, “art for stoners”? HA HA HA… now i really wanna see it.
plenty of free time from now until work begins in july 1st…
between the ‘design and the elastic mind’ show and this, that was hands down the most fun i’ve had at the moma since i don’t know when.
Room for One Color is awesome. When the show was at SFMOMA, if you entered it right, the elevator would open into it, and you would suddenly be washed in black and white. It was awesome.
Lots of chill-out rooms too… people sitting or lying on the floor…. Woah, man, like, wow…
Wonderful stuff, I really like his work. At SFMOMA the guards jump on your ass if you try and take a picture, which is annoying. I’m photographing a vestibule filled with yellow light- is my photo going to violate someone’s copyright?
moma is really cool that way. they just let people take pix. which is nice. though they are total freaks about anyone sneaking food into the museum’s outdoor courtyard. pull out a sandwich and you’ll have a guard all over you in seconds.