Olafur Eliasson, nel tuo tempo at Palazzo Strozzi

One of the most important Florentine exhibitions of this season is that of the Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson, which can be visited at Palazzo Strozzi until January 22, 2023. Olafur Eliasson: Nel tuo tempo is the largest exhibition ever held in Italy by the artist and collects historic and site-specific works born from the encounter with the Renaissance palace, which becomes co-protagonist, co-creator of the exhibition.

Eliasson wants us to understand how the perceptual experience and thus the experience of art are completely subjective. Different eyes see different things, consequently the information that reaches the brain, with which we process and read the world, will be different for each of us.

In this sense, light, the great protagonist of Eliasson's work, is the vehicle for this truth, and with the aid of colored filters and mirrors, it reveals a subjective reality.

At the exhibition, the visitor realizes that there is no one reality for everyone, that there are filters that the mind applies to everything, remaining fascinated and surprised.

Color, for example, does not exist by itself. It is nothing more than a luminous radiation, entirely dependent on the light, its intensity, type and angle. Eliasson demonstrates this through Beauty, a work of 1993, in which he places us in front of a natural phenomenon that we have all seen at least once in our life, the rainbow, showing us in fact, the way in which light contains all color and how these are broken down when, under certain conditions, the ray of light encounters drops of water.

Even Room for one color, puts us in front of the fact that the reality we see has totally depended on how our brain processes the luminous data. By means of a yellow filter, every perception of color outside the shades of yellow, gray and black is annihilated, accentuating thus every detail, every blemish of the skin, every line of the face. This reality that we see, however, is a lie, because the brain averages the shades in order to make sense of what it sees. So inside this room we see not only yellow, but also shades of gray and black. However, if you take a picture inside the room, you will notice how the phone sensor has entirely captured the yellow light diffused in the room, while the shades of gray and black, which were purely the result of our brain’s elaboration, are not perceptible. In this sense, it is evident the importance of experiencing the work in person, which is created only when the visitor enters the room.

According to Eliasson, the work is a collaboration with the observer, as it changes according to the observer their points of view.

This is the meaning of the title of the exhibition “nel tuo tempo" (in your time), which refers to our personal time, to the subjective experience of each of us. An experience, the one that the Icelandic artist offers us, that is extremely fascinating, at times destabilizing, and which is absolutely to be had.