Eliasson, Olafur

Olafur Eliasson: Sonne Statt Regen ("Olafur Eliasson: Sun in Place of Rain") Rare Copy

      Hatje Cantz Publishers/Lenbachhaus Munchen, 2003. Hardcover. First Edition. First Printing. Fine. Exhibition catalog presented as an Artist Book. One of the most beautiful art and photography books of the decade. The first and only edition. Published in a small and limited print run as a hardcover original only. A brilliant production by Olafur Eliasson: Oversize-volume format in wide oblong shape. Pictorial hard boards with titles on the cover and spine, as issued. Photographs by Olafur Eliasson. There is no text. Printed on thick coated stock paper in Germany to the very highest standards. Without DJ, as issued. Published on the occasion of the landmark exhibition of the same name held at the Kunstbau der Stadtischen Galerie im Lenbachaus Munchen from March 8 through June 15, 2003. Rather than serving as an accompanying catalog of the exhibition, the book is presented as a parallel counterpoint to the exhibition, showing the photographs of the bleak Icelandic landscape that Eliasson digitally altered as images in the book. He then re-created them as dazzling installations for the actual exhibition. The landscape photographs are taken in a Minimalist style and are rigorously, austerely, and luminously beautiful, unlike any other conventional collection of landscape photography anyone is likely to see. "Eliasson holds a unique position in contemporary art. His work does not immediately lend itself to being understood on the basis of one single perspective but takes its mark in certain universal processes common to all mankind. Olafur Eliasson's installations of light, air, ice, and water, reflections and vegetation, his photographs of the Icelandic landscape, and his scientific investigations confront our own gaze and existence in the world" (Publisher's blurb). Now widely regarded as one of the world's most influential geniuses, Eliasson uses art to make us aware, as if for the very first time (which all great art does), of the most basic elements of earthly life. We take them for granted and lump together under t