A River Runs Through It

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Danish-Icelandic artist and designer Olafur Eliasson has created a riverbed in Denmark’s Louisiana Museum of Modern Art entitled ‘Riverbed’. The whole floor of the South Wing of the museum was layered with rocks, creating a terrain for a stream of water to wind through. Visitors to the gallery are transported back outside, to experience walking on top of loose terrain, along a river.

Eliasson’s says of the piece ‘what I’m interested in with my work at the Louisiana isn’t really that you experience an object or an artwork. I am interested in how you connect this landscape to the rest of the world and ultimately, how you experience yourself within it. when we’re in our familiar surroundings, in our circle of family and friends, our senses are very finely tuned, but the further away we get from the local context, the cruder the sensing becomes. I wonder if our focus on the atmospheric can give us a relationship with something that is very abstract and far away.’ (Via)