Olafur Eliasson does not document nature—he listens to it. In Untitled (Island Series #2) and Untitled (Island Series #8), lone Icelandic islands hover in luminous blue and green, black and white, suspended like a memory in geological time. The islands - both geological and psychological - become floating symbols of introspection and ecological fragility. There is no drama here, only clarity. A stillness that hums. A shape that floats just beyond certainty.

Made in the years before The Weather Project stunned the art world, these early works already carry Eliasson’s signature voice—precise, reverent, quietly radical. The Cibachrome process, with its saturated colors and uncanny luminosity, transforms the images into something more than photographs. They become a question: What is real? What is remembered? What will remain?

These works belong to a foundational moment when photography became Eliasson’s philosophical tool. Exhibited in Moving Pictures (Guggenheim, New York and Bilbao), Thin Skin (AXA Gallery, NYC), and Ars Lucis et Umbrae (Vienna), and shown at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, it reveals the conceptual DNA of Eliasson’s later immersive installations.

Raised between Copenhagen and Iceland, Eliasson moves between science and spirit, poetry and presence. His art is not spectacle—it is sensation. It asks us to slow down. To witness. To feel.

This island is not just land. It is self, solitude, and sublime resistance. In a world of rising waters and vanishing ice, it reminds us what is still here—and how fragile that presence is.

Held in collections from the Guggenheim to SFMOMA, Eliasson’s vision reshapes how we see the world—and what we owe it.

Provenance
Neugerriemschneider, Berlin
Private Collection
Sotheby's London, 15th October 2007, lot 134
Private Collection, Europe