Blind Pavilion / Olafur Eliasson

By:  | September - 10 - 2011

Innen Stadt Auen (Inner City Out) is the first solo exhibition by the Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson in a Berlin institution. The central theme of the show, which has been curated especially for the Martin-Gropius-Bau by Daniel Birnbaum, is Berlin, the city in which the artist has lived and worked for many years. Here he has set up his multifaceted studio, which combines research, experimentation and production; and as a professor at the Berlin University of the Arts founded the Institut fr Raumexperimente (Institute for Spatial Experiments) in April 2009. The exhibition concerns itself closely with the relationship between museum and city, architecture and landscape, and space, body and time. The site-specific investigations within the museum are amplified through various projects in public space, thus linking the Martin-Gropius-Bau to other places within the city. The entire project includes 28 works, most of which have been created especially for this occasion.

Olafur Eliasson’s The blind pavilion on the Pfaueninsel in Berlin is one of several interventions in the public spaces of Berlin in connection with the artists solo exhibition Innen Stadt Auen. The pavilion is located on the northeast banks of the Pfaueninsel an island situated in the River Havel near Potsdam.

The blind pavilion consists of a double-layered steel construction clad in a series of transparent and translucent polygonal glass segments. Visitors can walk between the glazed layers that at some times reflect and some times obscure the surrounding area. The pavilions structure follows a central perspective geometry. The panes of glass are arranged in such a way that the viewer is surrounded with a completely black panorama when standing in the pavilions centre an illusion which collapses when he or she moves a step to the left or right. The visitors movements expose the perfectly blinded view as a mere construction and at the same time presents the islands unique surroundings in an entirely new light.

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