An artwork with a vertical gradient with faint rainbow colours gradually progressing from cool grey-blue to warm cream.

It’s not the person that is a challenge — it is the room for the person 2024

Is it possible to ‘lift’ a rainbow out of the landscape and recreate it on a sheet of paper?

Here we see a rainbow spectrum of light painted in layers of fine pigment. If you look closely at the edge of the watercolour, you can see the many fine layers making up this artwork, as well as the separate colours. To create each layer, parts of the paper were carefully dampened so that veils of colour could be applied and gently blended, floating in carefully controlled washes of water.

Despite initially appearing grey, the left and right edges of the work actually contain the most pigment – holding the central rainbow, as if compressing it. The least pigment of all is in the centre of the painting. As our eyes travel towards this point, the colours intensify to a pale radiant yellow where the white of the paper shines through.

– Geraldine Kirrihi Barlow

Low/no vision audio description

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Olafur Eliasson’s It is not the person that is a challenge — it is the room for the person, created in 2024, is a highly refined watercolour painting on paper. In comparison to larger format photographs on display in the ‘Presence’ exhibition, this watercolour is relatively modest in scale. Measuring 56 by 73 centimetres, the work is displayed at eye level on the gallery wall. The composition is minimal and almost abstract, presenting a soft vertical gradient of colour that recalls the appearance of a faint rainbow.

The rectangular sheet is filled with very pale washes of pigment. Along its outer edges, the subtle greys and bluish hues are cool and muted. Toward the centre, the colours shifts gradually, becoming warmer and lighter. In the very centre, a narrow band of pale radiant yellow glows most brightly. Here, the pigment is thinnest, allowing the white of the paper beneath to shine through. The transition between tones is seamless.

Up close, the surface of this work reveals delicate traces of each fine layer of watercolour applied. Slight irregularities at the edges of the sheet mark where the brushstrokes met the moistened paper. The overall effect is of light itself divided into colour, of a rainbow stilled and caught on paper.

– QAGOMA

A pale vertical band of faint colour transitioning from cool blue on the left to warm cream on the right.

A soft gradient of almost translucent colours that move gently from grey to pale yellow.

Room: ‘Iceland’

Olafur Eliasson returns regularly to Iceland. Although now based in Berlin, he was born in Copenhagen to Icelandic parents. As a child, he would spend summers with his grandparents near Reykjavík. Moving between these different landscapes has shaped his artistic practice in profound ways. Experiencing such distinct ways of life, qualities of place and phenomena of light, was critical in shaping his focus on how we perceive and understand the world. Moving from place to place, this effect is heightened: ‘When I looked at a shadow or at melting ice, I wanted to document something I could see, but others might not register,’ he says. ‘For my Icelandic family and friends there was no need to tell a story they already knew.’

Eliasson pays close attention to his surroundings. In his photographs, we see an alertness to different qualities of light and landscape, time and its rhythms. We also see a focus on how people orient themselves and adapt to the country’s harsh climate. The Hekla twilight series 2006 captures subtle changes of light and colour as dusk falls over the snow-covered mountain. We explore a landscape of rivers shaped by glacial meltwater, snow-capped plateaus and tumbling waterfalls through Eliasson’s eyes and camera lens. A rainbow appears cradled by the landscape itself at the base of a waterfall, then is painstakingly recreated in thin veils of watercolour. From a small piece of Icelandic lava rock, Eliasson constructs a model planet, lit by a hidden sun.

– Geraldine Kirrihi Barlow

It’s not the person that is a challenge — it is the room for the person 2024

Room: ‘Iceland’

Other works from ‘Iceland’:

Room: ‘Iceland’

Other works from ‘Iceland’: