There are no secrets in Olafur Eliasson’s art. There are mysteries — plenty of them, piling enigma on top of inscrutability — but no secrets. He happily shows you how he makes his art’s mysteries, which lets you slip comfortably into their dazzling, often spectacular beauty without fear of being duped.
Smoke and mirrors proliferate, but you are welcomed in as a full participant in the seductive play. You get space to see and think. “Olafur Eliasson: OPEN” debuted Sunday in Little Tokyo, where it fills the primary warehouse space at the Geffen Contemporary at MOCA.
One among more than 70 exhibitions around Southern California in the Getty Foundation-sponsored “PST Art: Art & Science Collide,” it is scheduled for an exceptionally long run — almost 10 months — closing July 6. Nine recent paintings and 18 light installations, 11 of which were made for the exhibition, comprise a visually, conceptually and perceptually thrilling survey of the Berlin-based, Icelandic Danish artist’s work from the last 20 years. The enthralling “Pluriverse assembly” is emblematic.
A fabric scrim is stretched across nearly the entire width of a large, darkened gallery, and it reaches almost from the floor to the high ceiling. A slowly shifting array of abstract shapes unfurls, sliding almost like an animation of a Surrealist painting by Arshile Gorky or Roberto Matta . Gold, white and an infinite variety of shades of gray emerge from pitch-black darkness.
Occasionally they’.