Olafur Eliasson at Versailles

The Exhibition of Olafur Eliasson in Versailles

Since 2008, the Palace of Versailles has invited famous contemporary artists to exhibit their works in the palace and in the gardens during summer. Each of them created a dialogue between their works and this beautiful place.

Now, it is the turn of the Icelandic/Danish artist Olafur Eliasson (from 7th June to 30th October). Olafur Eliasson is a visual artist who wants to renew our vision of places. His intervention is rather discrete and sober. His approach consists in playing with architecture using optical illusions, light, mirrors and meteorological effects. By displaying mirrors inside the palace he underlines the beauty of its architecture. In the gardens, he plays with meteorological effects. You will discover, among other strange phenomena, a very huge cascade which seems to be running down from an invisible cloud (Note: the cascade is functional between 11am to 12pm in the morning and from 3pm to 4pm in the afternoon).

Olafur Eliasson invites us, by his very poetic works, to rediscover and to renew our approach and our vision of Versailles.

Who is Olafur Eliasson ?

Born in 1967 (age 49) in Copenhagen, Eliasson grew up in Iceland and Denmark. He studied art from 1989 to 1995 at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts. Soon after, he founded his studio in Berlin. Today, he works and lives in Copenhagen and Berlin.
The artist plays with light-effects and optical illusions. He creates an atmosphere that changes our relationship to a place. Olafur Eliasson’s works are not only very poetic but are also politically engaged for the cause of climate protection. For example, in December 2015, during the Conference on Climate Change, he left massive blocks of Greenlandic glacial ice in the Place of Panthéon, to force us to face the situation and to think about environmental problems.