Olafur Eliasson on art, technology, and the luxury of uncertainty

In the Padimai presentation, however, the experience carries an additional layer: visitors can choose to store their journey through the VR realm—their “view”—and revisit it later on Padimai’s platform as part of an evolving archive of participant-generated data—the “matter”. Over time, these individual journeys accumulate into a shared archive on Padimai’s blockchain-based platform, turning each viewer’s experience into part of a growing collective record of the work.

Eliasson’s interest in perception can be traced back to his early years. Born in Copenhagen in 1967 and raised between Denmark and Iceland, Eliasson spent long stretches of childhood in the latter.As a teenager in Copenhagen he was deeply involved in breakdancing, performing with the Harlem Gun Crew before eventually enrolling at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts.

After graduating in 1995, he moved to Berlin, where he established Studio Olafur Eliasson in a vast former industrial building. Today, the studio functions almost like a laboratory or factory, bringing together architects, engineers, and programmers as well as craftspeople to realise ambitious installations.

Eliasson’s trajectory into art was never entirely conventional. Over the years, he has moved fluidly across mediums—experimenting with music, film and publishing, even producing Studio Olafur Eliasson: The Kitchen, a cookbook based on the vegetarian meals prepared daily in his Berlin studio.

His international breakthrough came in 2003 with The Weather Project at Tate Modern in London. A monumental artificial sun installed in the museum’s Turbine Hall transformed the industrial space into a glowing orange horizon. Visitors lay on the floor beneath the luminous disc, watching their reflections multiply in a mirrored ceiling. Simple in construction yet profound in effect, the work turned spectators into participants.

Many of Eliasson’s notable works follow this same logic. One of his best-known perceptual experiments, Room for one colour, which he constructed in 1997 and made its way to Singapore in 2018 as part of Minimalism: Space. Light. Object. showcase at National Gallery Singapore, immerses visitors in a chamber illuminated by monofrequency yellow light that suppresses the full colour spectrum, rendering everything and everyone in shades of yellow and black. The disorienting effect subtly alters how the eye registers colour, making viewers newly conscious of the mechanics of seeing.

Whether through fog, mirrors, coloured light or architectural interventions, his installations invite audiences to become aware of their own act of seeing. “I always use the word “view” to decentralise the artist,” he says. “I have made a machine. Using the machine makes the artwork.” The viewer, in other words, is never a passive observer, but an essential collaborator.

It was also through Sundaresan that Eliasson found himself drawn into a new kind of dialogue. They met shortly before the pandemic in his Berlin studio. Then the two began a series of weekly conversations that stretched across the course of a year, discussing art, technology and the infrastructures that were shaping the digital world. These exchanges would eventually lead to the presentation of Your view matter at Padimai.

Yet Eliasson approaches technological experimentation with a sense of restraint rather than evangelical enthusiasm. To him, uncertainty is not a weakness, but a productive condition. “I enjoy the luxury of allowing myself to be uncertain,” he says. “I think it can be a position of strength to say that I have doubts.”

This statement runs counter to the expectations often placed on artists operating on Eliasson’s scale, where confidence and clarity are frequently equated with authority. Instead, he frames doubt as a way of remaining open—to new forms of knowledge, new collaborators, and new ways of seeing. In an age defined by technological acceleration and economic certainty, the artist proposes a slower, more reflective stance.

Over the past three decades, Eliasson has built a body of work that ranges from intimate perceptual experiments to monumental public interventions. At the heart of these works lies a consistent proposition: that art can reshape the way people experience the world around them.

By manipulating light, atmosphere and spatial perception, Eliasson reveals the invisible systems—natural, social and technological—that shape our understanding of reality.

His explorations continue to evolve in Your curious journey, his major solo exhibition at Museum MACAN—the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Nusantara—in Jakarta, which runs until 12 April 2026. The exhibition brings together immersive environments that place the visitor at the centre of the experience, inviting audiences to navigate shifting landscapes of light, colour and reflection.

Among the works are installations such as Your spiral view, where mirrored surfaces fragment and multiply the viewer’s image, and Your uncertain shadow, which turns one’s silhouette into shifting fields of coloured light. Along with other sensory environments, the works encourage one to move, observe and question how perception itself unfolds.

In Eliasson’s installations, the viewer is never merely a spectator, but an active participant. As he puts it: “If you stand still, nothing happens. If you move a little bit, everything happens.”

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