About the work 8900054

OLAFUR ELIASSON

ABOUT THE WORK
 

8900054 consists of two dome-shaped steel structures partly buried in the ground outside ARKEN. The two parts, one large and one small, are constructed with a network of pentagonal and hexagonal steel rings.

8900054 confronts the viewer as a formally perfect structure. The title 8900054, which does not refer to anything specific, directs the thoughts towards the scientific or technological.

From far away the sculpture already has something hypernatural or futuristic about it. The shiny steel con¬struction of the dome parts as hexagons (and a single pentagon at the top) emanate a perfection hinting that the sculpture has a function or an inherent meaning. But the sculpture remains mute about what that function or meaning might be, leaving it up to the viewer to think it through.

With its form and its position in the landscape, the sculpture invites you to climb up on it or walk into it. In that sense it is appealing and tangible. You might easily end up playing with the idea that the two dome parts are in reality the tops of whole spheres that have been buried.

Pure structure
8900054’s dome construction of pentagons and hexagons is a variation on an architectural structure patented by the American engineer Richard Buckminster Fuller in the 1950s. Buckminster Fuller’s con-struc¬tion, however, consisted of triangles instead of 8900054’s pentagons and hexagons.

In 1996, the year 8900054 is from, three researchers won a Nobel prize for discovering a new type of mole¬cule. The molecule group, which was named ‘fullerenes’ after Buckminster Fuller, consists of dome-shaped carbon molecules where the atoms are ordered in pentagonal and hexagonal rings as in Elias-son’s sculpture.

8900054 hints at having a function or a meaning. This is supported by the references to both Fuller’s geodesic domes and the structure of the fullerene molecule. The structure of which the sculpture makes use is so functional and solid that it is used both in mega-constructions – for example giant sports stadia – and in elements as small as molecules.

8900054 takes on meanings from both science and architecture. Meanings that fuse together in the work and become pure form and pure structure.