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"Innen Stadt Außen - Inside instead of Outside" is the first solo exhibition by the Danish-Icelandic artist in a Berlin institution. The thematic point of departure for the exhibition designed especially for the Martin-Gropius-Bau is Olafur Eliasson's close relationship to Berlin - the city where he lived for many years and works in which he has established an unusually multifacited studio, combining research, production and teaching. Since 2008, he has been a professor at the University of Arts Berlin, where he heads the Institute for space experiments.

After numerous international exhibitions and projects, this exhibition benefits from the fact that Berlin is an open canvas for Olafur Eliasson to experiment with architecture and urban structures. With many new installations designed especially for the exhibition, the Martin-Gropius-Bau is the stage for Olafur Eliasson's practice.

Inside instead of Outside works intensively with the relationship between museum and city, architecture and landscape, as well as space, volume and time. The development of location-specific work for the museum context is expanded through projects in public spaces and commented, linking the Martin-Gropius-Bau to different locations within the city. The overall project includes over 28 works, most of which were created for the occasion.

The exhibition is curated by Daniel Birnbaum, critic, exhibition organizer and Director of the State Academy of Fine Arts, Städelschule, Frankfurt a. M., and Head of the 53rd International Art Exhibition at the Venice Biennale in 2009.

Daniel Birnbaum on the exhibition:
Sometimes one gets the impression that Eliasson's work is mostly about nature, more specifically about intense natural phenomena such as wind, water, mist and light. These are, however, only used as a means to produce works of art whose origin is evident to the public, for instance where a support structure of a  piece of turf "floating" in front of the windows of the first floor remains clearly visible  The focus will be placed thereby on the process of perception of the world. Of one's own perceptions.

As part of the Inside instead of Outside exhibition, the theme of the mirror constantly reoccurs, always causing a reversal of inside and outside. Throughout Berlin, one encounters bicycles with strange dematerialized wheels and mirrors in unlikely places. A truck, on which a giant mirror is mounted on one side, moves slowly through the city and "transfers" in real time its own fleeting film portrait. The mirror produces a surprising split-screen effect in which the actual and the mirrored environment exist concurrently and yet differently. He sets city buildings in motion with moving distortions in motion, creating thereby not only a doubling of space, but also a reversal of the expansion of space into space; he retains the short impressions of pedestrians, cyclists and cars keep on their way through the city. Eliasson's ability to double, to expand, and reverse is nowhere more visible than in the center of the Martin-Gropius-Bau. He lets the ornaments of the interior facade step into the darkness by building a huge kaleidoscope reaching up to the skylight that catapults the viewer into a startling architecture of infinite reflections. With simple means Eliasson stages the optical illusion of a crystal palace, where the visitors, covered in this porous architecture, seem to float between between inside and outside.


Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin
April 28th until August 9th 2010
www.innenstadtaussen.de / www.olafureliasson.net / www.gropiusbau.de