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| Installation view with Olafur Eliasson's Device for seeing potential solar futures (2024) at center right |
PST ART is a conglomeration of group shows. The principal exception is "Olafur Eliasson: OPEN," an in-depth presentation of the Icelandic-Danish artist. It's not a retrospective. Aside from a modest 2004 piece, it's all new work, 2021 onward and mainly brand-new pieces commissioned by MOCA and installed as a gestamtkunstwerk in the Geffen Contemporary. It's a family friendly show and, despite taking up the Geffen's cavernous space, quick to tour. Its 26 works can be reasonably experienced in an hour.
The exhibition's core is four walk-in kaleidoscopes in the central space. The titles suggest divination, a cold reading of our climate angst: Device for seeing potential solar futures, Observatory for seeing the atmosphere's futures, Viewing machine for imagining oceanic futures, and Kaleidoscope for beginning at the end. Each combines its stated subject with the viewers—holding phones, for the most part—multiplied to infinity.
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| Olafur Eliasson, Observatory for seeing the atmosphere's future (detail), 2024 |
The Observatory for seeing the atmosphere's futures brings L.A. light and space and smog into a fictitious stadium of viewers.
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| Olafur Eliasson, Kaleidoscope for beginning at the end (detail), 2024 |
Kaleidoscope for beginning at the end is the most cosmic of the quartet. It cycles between a starry night (more Vija Celmins than van Gogh) and fleshy, bio-texture cutlets.
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| Olafur Eliasson, Kaleidoscope for beginning at the end (detail), 2024 |
Other pieces play on the uncanniness of shadows, lightning, and mirrors. If you're got an art-curious friend or out-of-towner who wants to see what PST ART is all about, this might be the ticket. Beyond the funhouse dazzle, there's a serious meditation on the human condition and our troubled Anthropocene.
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| Olafur Eliasson, Your sunset shadow, 2024 |
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| Olafur Eliasson, Your mutual appreciation compass, 2022 |
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| Olafur Eliasson, Kaleidoscope for uncertainty and surprises, 2024 |
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| Olafur Eliasson, The listening dimension, 2017-2024 |
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