ARoS Aarhus, Your rainbow panorama Denmark, Danish Art Gallery, Architect, Triennial

ARoS, Aarhus Kunstmuseum

Your rainbow panorama: Building in Jylland, Danmark design by shl with Olafur Eliasson Work

14 + 11 Jul 2016

ARoS Aarhus Art Museum Announces the First ARoS Triennial

THE GARDEN – End of Times; Beginning of Times

The Past: 8 April – 10 September 2017
The Present and The Future: 3 June – 30 July 2017

photo : Adam Mørk

ARoS Triennial – Aarhus Kunstmuseum

The ARoS Aarhus Art Museum (above) is delighted to announce the first ARoS Triennial, a new international contemporary art exhibition that will be presented every three years in Aarhus, Denmark.

Taking place from 3 June to 30 July 2017, the launch of the ARoS Triennial will be one of the highlights of Aarhus’s year as European Capital of Culture 2017. Led by Erlend G. Høyersten, Director of ARoS Aarhus Art Museum, the first Triennial, entitled THE GARDEN – End of Times; Beginning of Times, will explore how man has depicted and altered nature according to his view of the world.

photo © Ole Hein Pedersen

The first ARoS Triennial will be the largest exhibition staged by the museum and within the city of Aarhus to date. Spread over several venues around the city, including the two main gallery spaces at the ARoS Art Museum and along 4km of coastline surrounding the city, the Triennial will feature work by a range internationally recognised artists.

Covering the past 400 years, the Triennial will be staged in three sections: The Past, The Present and The Future, and will reflect on man’s perception of nature according to philosophical, religious and political changes. The exhibition will explore how, throughout history, the garden has been viewed as a place to carry out scientific studies, an oasis for solitary reflection or a place of entertainment.

In our culture, the garden is a meeting place between civilisation and nature; a meditative place caught between two worlds. The garden meets various needs in different cultural contexts and is therefore the perfect image of diversity that makes up our world.

Aarhus art museum was designed by Danish architects schmidt hammer lassen

20 Feb 2012

ARoS Aarhus Kunstmuseum – Your rainbow panorama

Film of Work by Olafur Eliasson

A “small and beautiful video of the Danish/Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson’s spectacular work Your rainbow panorama at the top of the ARoS building.”

24 May 2011

ARoS Aarhus – Your rainbow panorama

Olafur Eliasson’s Masterpiece
Your rainbow panorama
opens in ARoS, Denmark

English text (scroll down for Danish):

On Friday 27 May 2011, a unique work of art, Your rainbow panorama, will officially open on the roof of the ARoS museum of art in Denmark. As from Saturday 28 May at 10am, there will be public access to this work, which is a donation from Realdania.

ARoS Aarhus Kunstmuseum – Your rainbow panorama:

photos © Ole Hein Pedersen

It is the world-famous Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson who has created this permanent work of art in the form of a circular walkway 150 metres in extent and three metres wide made in glass in all the colours of the spectrum. The spectacular work of art has a diameter of 52 metres and is mounted on slender columns 3.5 metres above the roof surface of the museum.

Visitors to the museum will have access to this great work of art via stairs and lifts. They can take a stroll such as will delight the senses round this circular pathway, which will provide them with panoramic views of the surrounding city and Århus Bay. Beneath the “floating” work of art, the actual roof area and its c. 1500 square metres has been covered with wood, so the surface constitutes a unique recreational area and viewing platform for visitors to the museum fifty metres above street level.

Your rainbow panorama

Ole Hein Pedersen

Your rainbow panorama will be visible from a great distance, and as you will see different colours according to where you are in the city, the work acts as a compass. At night, Your rainbow panorama is lit up from inside by spotlights embedded in the floor.

Olafur Eliasson describes the project in the following words:
“Your rainbow panorama enters into a dialogue with the existing architecture and reinforces what is assured beforehand, that is to say the view of the city. I have created a space which virtually erases the boundaries between inside and outside – where people become a little uncertain as to whether they have stepped into a work or into part of the museum. This uncertainty is important to me, as it encourages people to think and sense beyond the limits within which they are accustomed to moving”.

Your rainbow panorama at ARoS Aarhus:

photos © Ole Hein Pedersen

Symbol of Aarhus

As a symbol representing art, the many-coloured halo hovers above the cubical building by schmidt/hammer/lassen architects and gives visual expression to the fact that the architectural concept of the ARoS building derives from Dante’s “Divine Comedy”: At the bottom the nine circles of Hell, the journey up from the Mount of Purgatory and finally, at the top, perfection in Paradise.

Subsequent to an international art competition in 2007, the task of transforming the roof of ARoS and completing the concept of the building was given to Olafur Eliasson. Among other things, the judges explained their choice of Your rainbow panorama by saying that this work would become a powerful identity-creating symbol for ARoS and the city of Aarhus and also a unique, artistic and architectonic landmark of international standing.

The building of this extensive art project commenced in 2009, and summer 2010 saw the start of the installation of the now completed walkway. The work has cost 60 million kroner and has been financed by Realdania, while the cost of the roof terrace has been borne by Købmand Herman Sallings Fond. Aarhus Municipality is the authority responsible for the project.

Olafur Eliasson

The Danish/Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson (b. 1967) lives and works in Copenhagen and Berlin. In 1995, he established the Studio Olafur Eliasson in Berlin, from where, with a staff of some 45 architects, craftsmen and technicians, he creates new dialogues between art and its surroundings. Eliasson’s practice is characterised by his constant examinations of the relationship between space, sensing and body, and many of his works start out from natural elements such as air, light, ice or water.

He trained in the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Art in 1995 and achieved his international breakthrough with the exhibition The Weather Project in Tate Modern in 2003. Eliasson has carried out various projects in the public arena, including Green River, 1998, Serpentine Gallery Pavilion 2007, London, designed together with the Norwegian architect Kjetil Thorsen, and The New York City Waterfalls in 2008. As a professor in the Universität der Künste Berlin, Eliasson founded a school called Institut für Raumexperimente in 2009.

Book

To mark the opening of Your rainbow panorama, and with support from Realdania, ARoS is to publish a richly illustrated book on the project. Among its contents is an interview on the subject of this work with Olafur Eliasson together with a piece on it written by Professor Carsten Thau of the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts School of Architecture and photographs recording the building process and the finished work. This book can be bought in the ARoS Shop after the opening ceremony.

Olafur Eliasson

Danish text: