K20

A daily flood of images tends to dull our senses; in a museum, we often take just a few seconds to contemplate a work of art. The Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson attempts to counteract such perceptual desensitization through his latest project: with Your exhibition guide, Eliasson encourages users to take in their environments – whether in a museum or in everyday life – in fresh ways. We are called upon to experience encounters with art in unfamiliar and fundamentally different ways.
While a typical exhibition guide supplies viewers with information and answers to anticipated queries, Eliasson poses problems and invites art lovers to trust their own senses (K20, April 5 – August 10, 2014). In addition to an app, the project consists of a large installation in the spacious Grabbe Halle of the K20.

Eliasson developed his provocative stimulus to thought for museum visitors in collaboration with the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen and in close coordination with the exhibition Kandinsky, Malevich, Mondrian: The Infinite White Abyss, which explores the significance of the color white in the works of three avant-garde painters (K20, Klee Halle, April 5 – July 6, 2014). Initially conceived for the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen in Düsseldorf on the occasion of the Quadriennale Düsseldorf 2014, Eliasson’s exercises in sensitization for art-lovers is available as the app Your exhibition guide free of charge, and can therefore be used in the future at other museums and art institutions around the world.